Quiet Life I: Winter Storm
by Maeve Riannon
Summary: This is an AU story. What would have happened if Tomoe had lived? COMPLETE: Kenshin returns to the place where everything began... and receives a strange clue about the identity of a certain girl.
1. Prologue: Winter Storm

**Note to (possible) readers: **This story is an AU. It was born from my musings about how could Kenshin and Tomoe have lived if she hadn´t died that day, fueled by many discussions about the matter that I´ve read in several forums. About how things could have changed for him, and for her, and in their relationship. But, please, do me the favour of not comparing it with the events in Seissou Hen, and especially do not compare Tomoe with Kaoru. (Read more at the end of the page )

Thanks to aaerdan for commenting and correcting several things, and to Margit for beta.

**Quiet Life I: Winter Storm (1871)**

Tomoe stirred the pot once more, and lifted her head to clear her eyes from the smoke. As she felt her body shake with the first shiver of the fast approaching evening, her arms tightened around the shawl she was wearing, until her knuckles were almost white. She still could hear the peaceful cracking of the flames next to where she stood… but, behind them, the long and deep breath of the cold wind of the mountains was starting to rise in intensity.

"Miyoko-chan." she called. Almost at the same moment, she felt something soft colliding with her right leg, and a giggle followed. Shaking her head, she picked the ball from the floor, and turned back to face her daughter with an inquiring expression.

"Sorry." the child said, before starting to giggle again. Tomoe arched an eyebrow; Miyoko giggled further.

"Don´t you think it´s too cold to prance around without warmer clothes?" she asked at last, tossing the ball back and opening the box where she kept the garments. Behind her, she could distinctly hear a matter-of-fact "no", but she paid no heed to it.

"It wasn´t a question." she just clarified moments later, as she wrapped a small green shawl around her daughter. A mild scowl appeared on the child´s little brow for a second, as if she was pondering what she had just said, though when she made her first step with her new clothes she seemed to forget about this in favour of a new topic.

"Big." she stated emphatically, and then started to giggle again.

True enough, Tomoe had to admit with a sigh. Last year, she had made it thinking on future winters to come, and imagining she would grow quickly, but the truth was that, if she had changed thoroughly in the last months, her height hadn´t been much affected by it. Even if her husband kept on saying that she wasn´t short, she _was _short. And it was funny that she had sometimes wondered how much shorter would Kenshin be if he had been born a woman; now it looked as if she was going to know in spite of all.

_Children do not grow significantly when they´re still that young._ he had said. _For her age, she´s even tall._

Bah, she thought, shaking her head. What did _he _know?

"All right, let me see…" she whispered. Kneeling at her side, she began to fold the robe above her daughter´s obi until it was more or less adjusted to her size. "Better?"

"Better." Miyoko nodded with adult seriousness, and turned back to continue playing with her ball. Just as Tomoe got up and started to walk towards the fire where she was cooking, though, she felt something soft colliding with her leg again.

"Miyoko-chan…"

The child stared back at her with wide, innocent, violet eyes, and pointed at the shoji of the house as if to blame somebody else that wasn´t there. Tomoe followed the direction of her finger almost involuntarily, and, as she did so, it was suddenly slid open in a swirl of icy wind.

"Tadaima." Kenshin muttered, stepping inside his home and leaving the haori and the box of medicines on the wooden floor.

* * *

It had been very hard during the last years. Tomoe remembered everything as if it had been yesterday: the pain, the numbness, the feeling of being already dead…and then, after the catastrophe that had shook their lives, the slowly regained trust, and the blossoming love that had begun to take root in the barren wasteland of her soul. It had been a great shock and a turning point for her whole life, when she had found that she was able, no, _willing_ to forgive, and that she could not find it in her heart to fuel her grudge anymore. It had been terrible. Frustrating.

And yet, it had been liberating.

Many times, as she was musing while her hands were busy with housework, she had wondered if it had been just what she had thought that would be her absolute death, the loss of her hate, what had been the beginning of her new life. It sounded too ironic even for her, but she always came to the conclusion that there should have been a significant amount of truth hidden in that irony, for she had to admit that, while she was fueling the hate inside her, she was preventing herself from living. She did not want to live…even when she began to love him in spite of all, in spite of her unability to forgive him even. She loved him enough to save his life, to die for him, but never to live for him. And she couldn´t stand to see him die, but she was ready to save him risking her own life even with the knowledge that he would spend in grief as many days as she had spent in grief because of him, for he loved her too.

Another irony of her life had happened that day, though, and had altered the whole pattern: in the end, both had survived. They had emerged alive from that gelid scenario of betrayal and carnage, and, not only that; it had been him who had had to forgive her. And he had done so. It had been easier for him than what it had been for her, and this had tortured her for days. Could it be true that he loved her more than…than what she had thought she loved him?

It had been after that, and only after that, when she had started to feel inside her for the first time the will to live for him.

"Dinner will be ready in a few minutes, sorry." she apologized, turning back to check the pot once more. "Did your day go well?"

"Well enough." Kenshin answered as he took Miyoko in his arms. The little girl stretched her hands immediately to reach for his nose, as was her somewhat strange custom, but when he threw her in the air and caught her back with practiced ease she forgot about it and gave a thrilled squeal. "There are plenty of people getting ill with colds and such in this part of the year. Fortunately, none of them is grave. I don´t have too much practice yet…"

"You´re the best this isolated mountain region has seen in quite a while." Tomoe muttered thoughtfully. _In a **very** long while_, she added then to herself, for this certanly was no Otsu. Kenshin had decided to move there short after the battle of Toba Fushimi, since, though his intentions had been initially to help people with his sword, he had realized soon enough that he wouldn´t be able to lead that kind of life with Tomoe and then Miyoko depending on him. If he got involved in sword fighting, the worst wasn´t the immediate danger, but the enormous risk of being recognized as the legendary hitokiri Battousai, which would glue old enemies, or worse, old friends, to his heels at once. The best option was to start a living in an isolated place, as little affected by the war as could be, and resign himself to help people in other ways. Becoming the medicine man of that frozen region, as he had been medicine seller in Otsu with Tomoe before, had seemed a good option for him; and even if his wife was cursed with the knowledge that he used to hide in the woods alone, desperately practicing his moves over and over and freeing his ki as he could, there was nothing she could do about that. She had given him a daughter, a reason to do whatever in the world to leave his past behind and start a new life, but his whole soul had been bent into swordsmanship long enough as to make those struggles inevitable. Sometimes, she even wondered if he would ever be able to adapt wholly to the very same life he had fought for.

_It does not matter. _she chided herself for the hundredth time, turning to see her daughter failing to cach the ball that Kenshin had thrown to her. _It does not matter at all. I can wait until he does. _

_He will!_

"Was it cold outside?" she asked after a while. At the same time, she went to fetch the bowls to serve the rice, which looked cooked enough to her trained eye.

"No."

Tomoe sighed, and suppressed a chuckle.

"What´s the matter?" Kenshin asked, puzzled. His wife shrugged her shoulders, and motioned him to sit at the table.

"Nothing… You just reminded me of your daughter all of a sudden. Oh, never mind."

Seeing that the red haired young man´s look of puzzlement slowly melted into another of amused realization, a hesitant, true smile appeared in Tomoe´s features for the first time. Kenshin noticed it, and his lips were instantly curved to form another.

_How he loved to see her smile…_

"I hungry!"

Tomoe sighed once more, and shook her head in annoyance. As she had learned long before, moments like those were never too long when Miyoko was around.

"I fed you already, Himura Miyoko. And you didn´t even want to finish your plate!"

"Rice!" the child answered in a defiant voice, mimicking her stare.

"Give her some more." Kenshin intervened then in her favour. "Maybe it was too early before for her to be hungry."

_Oh, of course. You always find an explanation for everything, don´t you? _Tomoe thought sourly, going to the rice pot again and serving herself some more to share with Miyoko. Or well…on second thoughts, maybe it wasn´t that bad that she was starting to resent having to eat apart from them. The child was three years old now, born the same year of the Toba-Fushimi battle. She remembered only too well how astonished Kenshin had been when she discovered she was pregnant just after he had left the Ishin Shishi…how he had insisted on the fact having some kind of deep symbolical meaning. Though to this date she still had somewhat different ideas herself about the matter –after all, during those three years they had seldom been able to afford the luxury of being together- , she hadn´t even had the heart to argue about it until the present day, seeing how comforted he could feel at the notion. He had to suffer so much at each moment of his life, with all those memories of the people he had killed, that no help was ever superfluous.

_Maybe she should believe it too…_

Sometimes, she had to admit that she really envied his efforts for being always optimistical, in spite of everything, and even in spite of his many failures.

"Warm food does good to the stomach in this time of the year." he suddenly interrupted her thoughts, finishing his bowl and putting it aside. "The rice was very good… what did you put in it today?"

Tomoe smiled apologetically.

"There was nothing I could put in it." she confessed. "We don´t have anything else left."

Kenshin stared at the distance for some moments; then smiled once again with that smile that always managed to surprise her so much. It was so sad, but so warm at the same time… She wished she could achieve such warmness one day, past the regret, past the ice that had swept away her soul one day.

"Then, maybe it was your magic." he ventured.

"Could be." she nodded, a faint blush painting her snow white cheeks. "Yes… maybe."

* * *

After dinner, the whole family gathered around the hearth, and Miyoko soon fell asleep with her thumb inside her mouth and her dark locks spread over Tomoe´s white kimono. As the adoring mother watched her while she moved a bit to rest her head on Kenshin´s shoulder, she could distinctly hear the fierce whisper of the wind outside their home, and the sound of the tree branches cracking under the powerful pressure.

"I don´t know how she´s able to sleep so peacefully." Kenshin muttered after a while, taking his eyes away from the dancing of the flames to gaze at her too. Tomoe breathed deeply, and clasped her hands in a known gesture.

"Worries of the heart are noisier than any real sound." she said. "And she has none."

Something in the way in which she had spoken didn´t seem to pass unnoticed to Kenshin, who gave her a concerned look.

"Have you been worried of late?"

"No." she lied, evading his glance.

"Is it…" Here, his voice hesitated, before he gathered the courage to ask again ignoring her negative. "your family?"

"My..? "Tomoe recovered soon enough from her surprise, and her first reaction was to shake her head vehemently. The old pain was there still, she couldn´t deny it. But…"Kami-sama, no! We have talked about this before. We wanted to be together for always… and for that, I had to leave my family behind and you the path of the sword. It was hard for both, but weren´t we graced with new things to replace the old?" Half involuntarily, both pairs of eyes looked down at the sleeping Miyoko, who stirred a bit in her sleep as if aware that she was being watched. "Besides…" Tomoe ended her speech with a more determined smile. "I left my family behind before I met you."

"And I the path of my sword school when I became a hitokiri." Kenshin retorted regretfully. "We´re even."

"So we are." she nodded with a sad chuckle.

"Then… what were you worried about?"

_You clever one…_Tomoe thought in mild irritation before the inevitable surrender. And yet, it was in herself too, she had to admit it… since those horrible times, there was nothing she feared more than to find herself hiding things again, like a secret hoard without a key neither for the others to open it nor for itself to be freed of its oppressive content. No more diary. Never…anymore.

"Miyoko-chan." she answered slowly.

Kenshin´s eyes widened a bit in realization.

"Because of…yesterday?"

Tomoe nodded, not too surprised. It seemed that both had the incident still engraved in their minds, even if for any other person it wouldn´t have seemed much more than a triviality. The other day, when Tomoe had crushed a spider with her sandal, and her daughter had started to cry because it didn´t move anymore, she had easily imagined that the look in his eyes would mirror hers.

"We´re so soiled…" she sighed. " Our past lives… How could a child of peace…_ever _understand?"

Kenshin said nothing, violet expressionless eyes fixed on the fire. Tomoe gave a sharp intake of breath, but continued.

"If she´d soiled too in this peaceful era I wouldn´t stand it. And yet, if I teach her to be the way we would want her to be, will she ever forgive us?"

For a long while, that looked like an eternity for Tomoe, her husband kept that same position he had adopted when she had first started to speak. Finally, just as a half consumed log fell on the centre of the hearth sending sparks flying around, his eyes turned towards her, and she had to gasp at the sudden depth of those orbs.

_He had changed…_

"Teach her compassion." he said, brushing the dark locks of the child with a light hand. "Beyond right and wrong, there´s no other thing that can really keep you from soiling yourself."

* * *

Later, with Miyoko already tucked into bed with all the spare blankets and the fire duly extinguished, Kenshin and Tomoe went together to bed. It had been their custom since Kenshin left the Ishin Shishi, and Tomoe had discovered that there wasn´t any other way to cure him of his old habits of sleeping with the katana anxiously clutched in his hands than to take, beyond that initial role of sheath, the role of the sword itself. This way, she could help him with his frequent nightmares as well, and, in cold winter nights like this one, their embrace could give each other a much needed comfort and warmth. Tomoe was used to fall asleep as soon as she felt his arms around her body, clasping her as if she was going to fade or leave him as she had done on that morning that she did not want to remember.

However, this night it was different. Instead of falling asleep, she could not even manage to close her eyes, and long after she had begun to feel his regular breath against her back, she was still awake, pondering his words inside her mind.

_Teach her compassion…_

He had grown so much in those last years! She still could remember him when they had met; that boy hitokiri who believed that he knew everything, who knew where evil and good lay, who had the right to kill whoever was chosen and then claim it had been the choice of Heaven. And his pride, oh, that insufferable pride! He always had withdrawn to a dark recess of his mind whenever she had tried to make him _feel_, be aware of the true worth of the lives he took away, and had made her feel distinctly as if there wasn´t anyone listening…that this had actually been because her words rang only too familiar to his mind and awoke in him unpleasant memories, she could not have guessed until later. He had been completely lost, a cold shell condemned to madness when she had met him…but now, after the hard experiences that they had been through together, he had grown much more than she. Even after their first months together, in Otsu, it had been easier for him to forgive than for her. He had been the first of both of them to see hope and the end of the nightmare, even while they still lay far ahead. He had undertaken great efforts to relentlessly put his whole past under his eyes and repent of one deed after the other, after the knowledge of the worth of the people he had killed had struck him in the hard way on a snowy morning… and he had tried to atone for them, oh, how he had tried, to help people and give her back her happiness, while himself changing day by day and slowly getting farther from the hitokiri Battousai and nearer to the person he should have been one day before the frenzy of youth and profoundly misguided good intentions had turned him into such a being. He was doing all this alone, just with her help and Miyoko´s… and in spite of the knowledge that the road he still had to tread was long and difficult, she could not help but feel deeply and sincerely proud of him.

_Sleep well_, she muttered under her breath, turning her head slightly and pushing a strand of fiery red hair away from his forehead. There wasn´t any trace of sweat on it this time, and his features weren´t creased with the effects of a mysterious nightmare that he wouldn´t consent on telling her about later. She could not even see the veiled sadness that was ever present in them whenever he was awake; for once in months, to her utmost joy and content, she was granted the opportunity of seeing him in peace. _Sleep well, my love._

(The End)

() I know how difficult it is for many people to restrain from comparing, but the situation is so different that the comparation really _can´t_ be properly done. I´m not trying to imply at all that he gave more importance to his atonement than to Kaoru, but less than to Tomoe. Circumstances –and Kenshin himself- were very different, that´s all. I think that a simple read can give an idea about that, but I state it nevertheless.

As for their daughter. The real child Kenshin had, Kenji, was a son. This is an AU about the child he _could_ have had, so, considering that there are 50% of possibilities of being born male or female, I decided that the statistically more correct option was to gift him with a daughter. (Kidding, of course.)

As for Kenshin´s ideas about atonement…The conscience of his crimes had sprung from two main factors; Tomoe´s death and his sudden realization that he had killed Kiyosato Akira. The second is still there, plus Tomoe´s influence as a living person…so I assume strongly that he had similar feelings. Less confused, of course, for I believe that the knowledge that he had killed the woman he loved overwhelmed him too much and did not allow him to focus clearly during the ten years that he spent wandering.

Last but not least, you´ll ask me that why didn´t Tomoe die in this version. I assume that she thought a bit and grabbed Tatsumi´s knife without getting in the middle. So simple.

**And: **As for why did Kenshin have a cross-shaped scar: in the OVA Kenshin gets the second part from Tomoe as a closure for the first; signifying that he is forgiven. Since she puts the second over the first, it ceases bleeding as a wound and turns into a scar. Because of that dynamic, I can´t imagine how the wound Kyosato made could close into a scar without Tomoe drawing the second part here. She did it consciously in the OVA version (which I follow in the greatest number of details), so why wouldn´t she do it consciously here?


	2. Chapter One: A Knock on the Door

**Note: **All right, I convinced myself at last to continue publishing the True Story of Quiet Life I. Many thanks to Margit for everything…not only beta, but also for inspiring me, giving me ideas, listening to all my complaints and encouraging me not to leave it since the first chapter.

Disclamer: Some characters (_coughcough)_ belong to Watsuki Nobuhiro. Other don´t. ;)

**Quiet Life I: Winter Storm**

**Chapter One: A Knock On The Door**

_Get him!_

_Get the hitokiri…!_

He could hear screams behind him, warning him of imminent danger, shocking him into immediate actions. A sword was unsheathed with a shrill noise, where had it come from? Anguish crept inside him, gripping his heart with a frozen hand.

As always, that was the moment when he woke up.

_Well, at least now I **can **wake up,_ the red-haired man scolded himself, as he stretched his stiffened limbs on the futon and received the first caress of the sun on his face. In a way, to wake up each morning after having such horrible nightmares helped him to remember what his life had been, and how it had changed in those last years. It made him receive something people took so much for granted as the simple fact of waking up in a poor cottage with your wife sleeping at your side with humble gratefulness and relief, and, somehow, he could say he cherished them for that. Even if they were… well, horrible.

_If you came each night to haunt us in our dreams for all our lives until we died, people would probably live in peace for a long time, _he thought, ruefully shaking his head and resting back his body on his elbow. 

Tomoe would be proud of him this time, he mused then with an absent smile on his lips. He had controlled his urges to get out of bed and do something at once, something that had made him be at the end of her reproachful glance countless times, when she had woken up to see him pacing restlessly around the house like a caged animal. It was precisely that what he loved and admired the most of her, that she refused to dismiss him as a lost case since the beginning. Even if in lots of ways he _was _a lost case…

Giving a sigh that covered all those musings, the man stretched one of his arms, and began to caress her dark plaits fondly until her hazel eyes snapped open.

"Good morning, Tomoe," he whispered to her when they widened in pleasant recognition. 

"Good… good morning," she answered in a sleepy tone, snuggling closer to him. Oh, yes, he remembered, it was winter. The cold. That cold which had affected so many people…

"Put this on," he reacted at once, and unfolded her shawl to lay it over her shoulders. "And don´t get up before I've lighted the fire."

Tomoe smiled, as he got up and gave her a last lingering caress on her hair. While he began to fumble with the cinders and sticks on the hearth, she stayed alone in bed to put her shawl on, and Kenshin could have sworn that she had shaken her head.

*     *     *     *     *

As it was frequent enough with her, and unlike her mother, Miyoko did not take very well to be awoken and told to get out her warm bed in such an unpleasant morning. From where he was, Kenshin could hear her whimpers, and Tomoe´s patient voice coaxing her into leaving her covers for the shawl she was extending in front of her. Poor child, he thought with some pity… he would lie if he said that he never had delivered similar scenes, back when he was the youngest of his family. 

"Don´t you want to have breakfast?" his wife´s voice was asking, as quietly as ever.

"No! I want bed!" Miyoko cried in a fit of stubbornness. Instants later, though, she took breath again, and her voice sounded filled with new hope at a discovery. "Breakfast in bed," she proposed.

"No, you can´t do that, Miyoko-chan. "Tomoe sighed. "You will make it dirty."

"I won´t!"

Kenshin closed his eyes, strangely wishing that the exchange would bring him more memories than what it did. How had his mother coaxed him to get out of bed in winter? Truth was, he couldn´t even remember her voice, as if the whole memory of her had been brutally erased from his mind. Had she…?

But a strong knock shook the door in that moment, snapping him out of his musings.

"Himura-san! Himura-san, are you here?"

Only in a few seconds, he did not even know how, Tomoe took a struggling Miyoko out of her bed, tucked her inside her shawl, and ran with her behind the screen among protests of all kinds. Kenshin needed more time to react, ironically, but when he did the first thing for him was to get up and walk towards the door.

"Coming!" he told the waiting man, chief Hata-san´s youngest son according to his voice. _What new urgency…?_

"Good morning, Akinori-kun." he greeted the adolescent newcomer with a serious nod, as he slid the shoji open. "To what do I owe your visit? Any accident?"

"No. I…" The boy had to stop as soon as he had started, striving to regain his breath. Kenshin made a calming gesture towards him, and advised him to take it easy, but his own worries had increased a bit. Why had he come running?

"It´s nothing you have to care of as a healer. I´ve come to ask you," Akinori managed at last, "to go and see my father at once."

"Your father? Not as a ...healer?"

At once…

_You have been lying…_

_Aren´t you him?_

_Get him!_

_Get the hitokiri…!_

No! What madness….?

"Wait a minute, please," he replied, regaining his composure once more. "I have to get dressed, but do come in if you want and warm yourself next to the fire..."

"I´m warm enough already," the young man declined with a shake of his head. "Besides, well…," Kenshin could see his cheeks reddening considerably. "Your wife… Oh, never mind, but please, be quick!"

Just after he had got in once more, and closed the shoji behind his back, two faces darted out from behind the screen to look at him in worry.

"What did he want?" Tomoe asked, noticing his concern as if his countenance was an open book she could read. Miyoko leaned towards her mother while she finished tying her obi, and whispered something in her ear to which Tomoe answered patting her shoulder.

"The chief wants to talk with me, that´s all," Kenshin announced with a calmness he was somewhat far from feeling in truth. "Have breakfast prepared when I return."

*     *     *     *     *

In spite of the voice of reason telling him over and over that the wild thoughts darting through his mind were totally impossible, Kenshin was not able to calm himself during all the way to his destination. For once, it was stronger than him… just the mere possibility of someone discovering his identity and shattering his new life and Tomoe´s put him into a state of near-frenzy. Especially for her, for she did not deserve anything except the utmost happiness and peace, and if he knew he had been the cause of her misfortune…

But no, he thought, he would do whatever was possible to suffer the consequences alone. Alone, as he had been when he decided to join the Choshuu Ishin Shishi.

_Only that… **could** he, this time?_

Why else should he have been summoned so quickly, without medicine box or anything, or even any prospect of an accident or a sudden illness?

All those things tortured Kenshin´s mind as he walked, more often than not forgetting that Akinori was walking behind him until he had to wait for him impatiently moments later. 

"Hey, Himura-san, and you _really haven't _had breakfast?" the lad cried in a ragged breath. Ashamed once more, the red-haired man stopped.

"Sorry," he muttered, falling in a slower pace as Akinori caught up with him. It was useless to think and wonder so much now. What would be would be, but at present there was nothing he could do except respecting the most basic rules of politeness with a poor boy who was completely innocent in any case.

_Innocent_…That very word brought shame to his heart sometimes.

"Himura-san!"

"Uh?" 

Akinori turned his bright red face towards him, and made a sign with his hand.

"We´re here."

"Oh…yes," he said, feeling completely stupid for not having even noticed. He gave a sharp intake of breath to pull all his wits together, and forced himself to follow the boy inside with a perfectly calm mask. Behind the shoji it was all darkness at first, but after a while he  was able to see the glow of a hearth, in front of  which the silhouette of a woman in a blue kimono was toiling. Closer to the door, an old man was sitting in front of a low table, with swollen eyes filled with worry.

_Could it be even worse than what he had imagined?_

"Father, Himura-san is here!" Akinori yelled, as he stepped aside so that Kenshin had free entrance to the depressing scenario. That house did not bring him connotations of happy, family life now, but rather of the sordid shacks where he had got his assignments. Or maybe it was all in his mind, after all…

"You sent for me" he ventured, getting closer but remaining at a respectful distance. He had repeated that same ritual so many times that he had actually forgotten that there were any others, any places where maybe the man who summoned him did not expect him to stay four steps away, with the foul smell he carried everywhere no matter how many times he scrubbed…

_Not **now**_, his mind was quick in admonishing him once more. 

"Himura," Hata-san laid the chopsticks on the table. Before he continued talking in his raspy and somewhat hoarse voice, he drank a long sip of his tea, and then fixed a pair of reddish eyes on him in which Kenshin should see a lingering shadow of authority. "Sit down and have breakfast with me, please."

_Of having food I was thinking now…_he thought ruefully, but steeled himself to accept nevertheless. If he had allowed anything to affect his capacity to eat, he would have died of malnutrition long ago.

"Thank you very much," he bowed, sitting down on the opposite side of the table while Hata-san made a gesture to his wife to prepare some more rice for him. Akinori bowed from the threshold, and pulled the shoji open to go out once more.

"You weren´t here at the end of the Bakumatsu…" the old man started abruptly when his son was gone. "Were you, Himura?"

"Uh…? No, I arrived months after the war ended," Kenshin answered with care, his eyes fixed on the table. It was as if battle had begun; from now on any thoughts about the what or the why of the things he was asked or told would better be left for later. Not even suspicions about the Bakumatsu and himself mentioned in the same sentence.

_Emotions not only betrayed the swordsman._

"But you know how we managed to stay safe, don´t you? I´m sure someone has told you before."

"Yes," The red-haired man nodded, both in assent of the question and in acknowledgement for the cup of green tea that the old woman had just put in front of him. "Thank you, Chiaki-san. I have been told that you… made the choice of giving the Imperial Army unconditional support as soon as its influence reached these places."

"Oh, yes. What else could we have done? The chief of the villages of these mountains decided to do that, and my honourable friend was proved right. Nobody did us any harm, …and the Meiji restoration won." Hata-san´s voice sounded defensive, so much that it surprised Kenshin. "We don´t have a single life on our conscience."

"Which is the most important of all," he answered, with a sudden earnestness that was not born from the wish to please the man who was sitting in front of him. As he took a sip from his own cup of tea, however, he was able to spot a contented spark in his eyes.

"I´m glad that you, a samurai, think like this." 

Kenshin nodded absentmindedly, not even bothering to correct him and say that he was actually no samurai. Maybe he was, now, he mused to himself. To be a peasant he would first need to feel like one more among peasants, and he had not been able to feel like one more anywhere yet.

And besides, _that _was not the matter now.

"I suppose you´re wondering whether I have called you so early in the morning just to share old stories," Hata-san interrupted the brief silence. Kenshin shook his head politely, but did not say anything. If he had, he thought, maybe he would have betrayed himself, either giving away his worry through troubled violet eyes or bringing chills and suspicions down the spine of the village chief with cold, emotionless steel blue ones. Himura Kenshin was not a man of middle ways.

_Especially when something he cherished was in danger._

But instead of the incommodating pause he was expecting, to his surprise, Hata-san actually started to laugh.

"You´re so polite…," he exclaimed, holding his side and doing an effort to quench the raspy sounds that came from his throat. From the corner of his eyes, Kenshin could see his wife sending him a glance full of annoyance.

"Now, where were we? Oh, yes, yes, the important issue… We´re getting to it right now," the man finally promised, taking breath. "This very morning, a messenger from my honourable friend the chief of the villages of these mountains arrived to this village. He´s having a rest in my room," he added, when he saw that Kenshin had the instinctive impulse of scanning the place with his eyes. Damned custom, the ex-hitokiri cursed to himself.

"Sorry," he apologised, impatient nevertheless to hear the rest of the story.

"You don't have to be. The samurai are always searching for enemies…" Hata-san smiled. Then, in a blink of an eye, he was dead serious again, and coughed. "But this time, even if there are no enemies, there is a danger for our village. A very, very ugly danger."

"Danger?" Kenshin asked, though the obvious question hidden behind that one would surely be "_And why me_?" His interest in the matter was quite impossible to hide by now, and he was barely able to stay calm.

"I´ve told you about the treaty with the Imperial Army we made" the chief  explained. "What you do not know is the best, yet. The other day, my honourable friend got a message saying that the government was to reclaim in brief the heavy fine we had to pay for our involvement with Tokugawa."

"Fine?" Kenshin´s eyes widened, first in relief and then in worry. So it had nothing to do with him after all, but… "Well, this is surely an error," he tried to calm him. "Nothing that can´t be solved."

"Yes, maybe it is," Hata-san nodded. "But the truth is that the people who have already heard about it at the Ebei village are very nervous. We _can´t _pay that and we don´t _have _to_._ If the government doesn´t change their mind soon , people would be ready to die rather than starve this winter, and this is what they call rebellion. A real disaster, as you no doubt will realise, having been in wars yourself. No, you don´t have to say anything to this," he added, when Kenshin began his clumsy attempts to reply something. "I´m in debt with you and I do not mind your past in the least as long as you´re useful in the present. Oh... I suppose this did not sound terribly nice either."

"Thank you nevertheless," Kenshin replied, unable to avoid a smile even in the middle of such a grave situation. Villagers… "But, tell me, how can I be useful for you in this? I will do whatever thing, for this is my village too, and I have my family living here."

"In other words," the chief summed up, "you´d be as screwed as we would be and you can do more than what we could do. The perfect help, aren´t you?"

"Well, I suppose so…," Kenshin admitted with effort, while a part of him couldn´t help but feel offended. Of all the ways to put something forth… 

"When we signed that treaty, we were left with one of the copies, left in my honourable friend´s keeping. With it, I´m sure we could prove the error to the government officials that will come to the Ebei village in two days. But the small problem of all this is that the document isn´t anymore within my honourable friend´s keeping. For several reasons, it is here, with me, and I would ask you to bring it to him."

"You don´t trust the messenger?" Kenshin asked, nodding once more as Hata-san´s wife put the bowl of rice in front of him. He would have preferred Tomoe´s rice, he thought, especially as he was starting to have the suspicion that soon enough he wouldn´t be in the village or with his wife anymore.

"Of course I trust the messenger!" Hata-san cried out. "Any person that my honourable friend trusts has to be trusted by me. I trust him perfectly to go though all the way with the paper without stealing or destroying it, but who assures me that it couldn´t be stolen _from _him? There is snow in the pass right now, and it´s not the season for travels. Nothing happened to him when he came here, except that he has caught a cold and a fever… no, you don´t have to examine him, he will get well and you´re needed elsewhere. But this does not mean that nothing is going to happen to him when he returns with the paper. Think, wolves, bandits, all that! My honourable friend had no one else to spare for obvious reasons, but he asked me to bring the paper back with someone I trusted enough to hand it over safely to him. You´re the only samurai living here, and I suppose you held a sword once. What you did in the wolf-hunt…well, I think you would run after them and not the other way round."

For a while, the room stayed in silence again, only broken by the noise of Chiaki-san washing the pots. 

"And you trust _me_?" Kenshin asked at last, his voice soft and eerie in the middle of his shock.

For once, Hata-san did not have an immediate answer.

"Well…," he fidgeted, a bit uneasy. "I didn´t quite imagine that this would be your reaction! Why shouldn´t I? You saved my wife´s life, after all, and you´ve been living here with your wife and child for three years now. You have taken care of many people who were ill or had accidents, and though you like to be alone, you have helped us in many ways."

Somehow, those words managed to distress Kenshin more than anything else had. Unable to find something appropriate to say, he lowered his head, and closed his eyes for a while.

Oh, that he was so _obviously_ unworthy of that trust. He had done nothing but lie to them since he had arrived, even while he had helped them and atoned for the hideous crimes of his past. And still, he was trapped in his own schemes… there was nothing he could do but to accept that trust that was given freely to him and help his village with its problems.

"Just tell me how good you are with the sword, and I promise I won´t tell anybody if you don´t want to. You trust me, I trust you, and things go all right."

Well, he rectified, maybe not _so _freely. But nonetheless….

"I must confess, I have issues against trusting people easily, Hata-san," he said carefully, putting his bowl aside and folding his hands in his lap. "But I´m not questioning your judgement, and in fact have no reasons to do such a thing. I _will _bring the paper safe to Ebei, and nothing will prevent me from doing so."

As he searched for the emotions in Hata-san´s glance, he could see that, once more, the old man believed him. All demonstrations, all tests, were there in his adamant eyes, and the village chief apparently had the ability of seeing them.

"Of course you will," he smiled, with a petulant expression. "I called you for a reason."

*     *     *     *     *

The sun had broken again the thick mantle of clouds when he went out from the old chief´s house, pondering the situation over and over in his head as he walked at a brisk pace. He would be gone in a couple of hours, having already used part of his remaining time to examine that poor messenger in spite of all. The paper was already in his power, safely tucked in the sleeve of his haori, and with it maybe the lives of many people. Deserving or not, he had them in his hands once more, but this time he wouldn´t kill them with his sword, rather save them with it if it was necessary.

By the way, how strange, Hata-san hadn´t talked about a sword in any moment. During all the conversation, it had been implied that he would _need _one, but he hadn´t offered any to him. Maybe because he didn´t have any. Or else…well, he could imagine he had one.

_Don´t underestimate people, Himura. _he chided himself with a shake of his head, _even if they´re not swordsmen. Your attempts at fooling people are really poorly thought up._

And, speaking about fooling….

_Kami-sama._

Stopping for an instant in the middle of his way, Kenshin felt some of the anguish come back again, this time at the thought of being at Ebei when the government officers came in. Just the sole possibility of them recognising him was painful even to think about.

_And stop at once thinking you´re **that **famous,_ he grumbled, in an attempt to calm himself over that issue too. He would go to the village because he had to. Paranoid fears would come later, if there was an occasion.

"Tadaima," he muttered, pushing the shoji of his house aside. As always, Miyoko was waiting for him, and in spite of all the problems he had in his mind at the moment he could not help but feel pleasantly warmed by her presence. He scooped her up in his arms, and heard her giggles of delight.

"You´re back," Tomoe said, a subdued relief written on her face. 

"Yes, I am,"he answered. "Sorry…I had breakfast already. They made me."

His wife shrugged her shoulders.

"Don´t worry, it will be good for lunch too. Did it all go well?"

"Mainly, yes," he ventured, a bit reluctantly. As he could notice almost at once with an inner sigh, this brought concern to her face once more. "No, nothing grave. I have to leave on my trip to Ebei sooner than expected, that´s all. In two hours, in fact."

Tomoe blinked in wordless astonishment.

"You leaving?" Miyoko asked with a pout, trying meanwhile to reach his nose while he was distracted. "Sick people?"

"Yes, Miyoko-chan," her father said as he took her hand away from his face, ignoring her mother´s query in favour of her more innocent one. "Many sick people. I have to bring my medicines there, like every year," He put her back on the floor, and patted her head. "Go back to play now, right?"

The girl scowled.

"I was helping Mother," she informed him proudly. This brought a smile to both her parents, even if just moments later they were looking at each other seriously again.

"What…?" Tomoe began, but interrupted herself as soon as she had started. "Uh…well, I´ll prepare the food and the other things you´re going to take with you, and you can tell me meanwhile, right? Miyoko-chan, bring me the bag in the corner."

"Thank you," Kenshin nodded, truly grateful. "But, as I told you, there´s nothing to be worried of. Just Hata-san wanting to give me something for his friend, Ebei´s chief, and as I was going to travel there nevertheless…"

In spite of those words, though, nothing changed in Tomoe´s face. Like Kenshin thought ruefully then, that was what happened when one spent his whole life telling his wife that _nothing _was the matter… 

"I´m still worried. Please, don´t leave me like that," she deadpanned, politely of course but the message still there. Her husband sighed, and followed her quick steps as she rushed towards the kitchen pot and then towards the clothes box, to prepare food and clothes for him.

"All right, Tomoe," he surrendered in the end. What else could he do? He knew very well that she considered sharing everything with him as some kind of atonement, and that she took it as seriously as he took his own, even if he didn´t think they were comparable. She had been forgiven by both parties long ago, or so he believed, something he could not say about the _thousand_ parties he had wronged. But if there was a thing he had learned, it was that, if not as guilty, she was as stubborn as he was.

**And**, of course, he´d better confess it was pleasant to unburden himself sometimes…

"Look at this," he instructed her, using a moment in which her hands were empty to shove the rugged document into her hands. Surprised, the woman stopped in her task of searching for clothes in the box, and knelt on the floor to inspect it.

"This is…" she muttered, as still as if she had turned into a marble statue.

"The only document in our power which proves that these villages chose to support the Meiji Restoration," he explained, kneeling at her side. "Which I have to bring to the Ebei village in two days to ask the government officials to change their decision of making us pay an outrageous fine." For some reason, he thought, he felt for the first time a certain tinge of pride in his voice at saying "us" where before he had always said "they". Belatedly, he wondered if Tomoe was able to perceive it too. "Hata-san entrusted it to me."

"Entrusted?" The woman folded the paper again with care, and handled it to him slowly. Grain by grain, spark by spark, recognition began to come to her eyes. " I see… But, won´t it be dangerous?"

"I´m used to go through that pass every winter," he reassured her. "Bandits and wolves are nothing to me. And besides, you know that if I´m always prudent; now I will be more than ever."

"I was not speaking about the pass." she intervened, putting a blue kimono on the bag. Kenshin immediately understood what she meant, and put an arm around her shoulder.

"No one will recognise me. I will cover my scar and I won´t show my skills in public."

"I believe you," she said with a tiny smile. "But sometimes we just can´t predict in which circumstances we can get involved."

"And sometimes we can," he answered firmly. For a moment, he was even surprised at his tone, and at the passion he felt in his heart pushing him to answer as he did. "When I have a life, and a child, and a wife, and our peace to protect, I _won´t_ break any promise. Do you believe me, Tomoe?"

The woman lowered her eyes in silence. Kenshin could see her small smile beginning to widen, until it turned into a full, warm one.

"Yes, I do. Of course I do."

"Mother!" they both suddenly heard, a shout coming from the kitchen hearth. A scent of smoke started to reach suspiciously their nostrils, and as the woman got up in a rush and ran towards Miyoko, she saw the child staring wistfully at the cooking pot.

"Burn." she announced, shrugging her nose in disgust.

*     *     *     *     *

"I hope you will be a good girl, and that you will do what your mother says."

"I´m good girl. Always." Miyoko corrected him, stretching her neck and tiptoeing so that her father could kiss her goodbye in the forehead. After all problems had been solved, Kenshin was at last at the door, his bag in his hand and the medicine box on his back, and both sword and paper well-hidden under his haori. He never could help feeling astounded about how well did Miyoko take his departures, even such a sudden one.

_Surely she must be already thinking about how fun it will be to have her mother all to herself, _he mused, for a moment feeling a brief tinge of jealousy come to his heart. He could still think childish sometimes, fortunately for him. And he could bet, above all, that if people knew the things that he considered blessings he would be imprisoned for deep madness.

"Have a nice journey. And, come back soon," Tomoe told him as he raised his gaze and locked it into hers. She was surprisingly calm, nothing in her reminding him of the worry she had felt before. He had never known how far did some people trust him until today, and this made him as happy as it preoccupied him.

"Have a nice journey," Miyoko repeated with a grin. 

Kenshin smiled to them, a last smile of farewell, and turned back to start his long way towards his destination.

(to be continued)


	3. Chapter Two: Decisions

**Note: **This chapter is... well, never mind. No one reads this, anyway. If you by chance venture into this apparently forbidden land of my AU, welcome!

Effusive thanks to Margit Ritzka, as always and more.

Chapter Two: Decisions 

A sunray wrung a spark of brilliance from the snow he had absently tugged with his right foot**. **His eyes were closed for a moment out of instinct, then his lips slowly curved in a wry grin.

He didn´t like the snow. 

Sometimes, he wondered how something so pure, so innocent of the pain and betrayal of the people who tread quickly over it could provoke such feelings inside him in certain occassions. He supposed everybody had to find in their lives something to hate, but to his righteous mind such an arbitrary damnation on the most harmless element of that terrible winter scenario looked somewhat…unsettling.

_Well, _he told himself, resuming his quick stride down the mountain. He could hear voices already, probably of children who were throwing snow at each other outside the village. _Since when have I been sane?_

It had been a short trip, for he had deliberatedly tried to be quicker to prevent the possibility of arriving too late, but he couldn´t help feeling strangely lax. In his way, he had found himself praying a lot of times not to have a confrontation when those people arrived,  not to be discovered and taken away from the only life worth of protection that he had ever had. If that happened, he wouldn't ever forgive himself… and yet, on the other hand, he wouldn´t forgive himself either if something happened to his village. Even if Hata-san had just entrusted him with the document, he felt responsible for everything that would happen from then on. After all, in the past, from the moment when Himura Kenshin was given a paper he knew a mission had begun, had it not?

Trust _him _to compare both situations.

"Ow! You will see, you bastard!" a  boy cried among giggles, some metres away from where he was. Out of instinct, he turned his body when he heard the whistle of the air, and dodged a ball of snow that came flying towards him.

"Hey! Be careful, children!" he admonished them with a slight smile. Of course they wouldn´t have heard him come, he thought.

"Himura-san!" All the boys were immediately turned towards him with surprised faces. "You appeared again!"

The slight smile turned at once into an amused chuckle at the word. "Appeared", indeed… A redhaired creature that came now and then with nobody noticing, directly from that menacing mountain enveloped with black clouds, he was.

"Let´s say I _came_, right? I bring remedies for winter colds like the one you´re going to get soon if you keep throwing snow at each other."

Murmurations of all kinds followed those words of his, and Kenshin lifted his eyes in resignation. Children…

If he had had a son, would he have needed to learn to throw snowballs with a smile? 

"I´m going to tell the people!"

"No, I´ll go!"

"Go if you want, but I´ll arrive before you do!"

"No fair, I said it first!"

The red-haired man watched how the running little points were lost against the background of snow, and bit his lip as the vertigo of the all-swallowing whitenesss threatened to overcome him once more.

Definitely, he thought, he didn´t like the snow.

*     *     *     *     *

As he arrived to the village at last, Kenshin was greeted by the somewhat disturbing sight of many people silently standing in the main street. At first, he thought that it was because they had learned of his arrival with the document, but soon he learned that there was also a much less peregrine reason. Winter fever had caused great havoc that year, and he couldn´t have arrived at a most appropriate moment.

"I knew you would come, Himura-san." an old woman smiled in happiness, handing him a basket of dried fruit. "Will you go to see my husband first?"

"Your husband isn´t as ill as my son, so wait your turn!" a man replied to her while he arrived with a small rice bag. "He´s as pale as washed rice."

"Please, give me something for my brother." a young girl cried. 

Kenshin´s hands fidgeted distractedly with the fruits basket. With some skill and dexterity, he managed to get away from them without having to push anyone aside and, turning back, he bowed.

"I will see to all of them today, I promise. But before, I have to visit Eguchi-san."

"I don´t know if he will see you." The man of the rice bag shook his head in what seemed to Kenshin a sign of heavy worry. "Things have happened since you came here last."

Many people nodded in sombre assentment, to corroborate his words.

"The Meiji government is blaming us of something we haven´t done." the old woman informed timidly. 

"As if we didn´t have already with our own troubles!"

Kenshin sighed to himself, then swallowed as he walked away from them once more. Things would never be easy for him, as always.

"He will see me." he assured them.

*     *     *     *     *

Since he had started to come to the village, and to the other two ones that were still farther to his home, Kenshin hadn´t broken the ritual of visiting Eguchi-san at least once. He had felt at ease with that old man, who in spite of having some of Hata-san´s calculating and authoritary behaviour was more easy-going and of pleasant conversation, having lived in a Buddhist temple for his childhood and in a city during his youth. Of all the people who lived there, he was by far the one who had seen more of the world Kenshin had lived in, and though he had been there for too long as for to have taken part in the Bakumatsu, it was nonetheless rumoured he had taken part in some long-forgotten battle of the old era.  Whether this was true or just people´s imagination, though, the ex-hitokiri had been surprisingly unable to tell by simply studying him.

Maybe that was the reason why this time he was so uneasy at the cold steel hidden under his haori, he thought, repressing a grimace as he sat on his feet in front of him and lowered his head in a bow.

"Eguchi-san." he greeted him with deep courtesy. Before the old man could even answer, he took both the document and the reverse-blade sword from their hiding place and displayed them in front of him, ignoring the beatings of his heart. "I come to deliver something to you from the part of Hata-san. He sends his respect and friendship to you, and wishes you the best."

The chief of that village and head of the other three ones widened his eyes in recognition, and extended a hand. Kenshin had to hold his own in place with some effort, accustomed as he was to avoid at all costs that someone, anyone, could get at his weapon, but this wasn´t the thing that Eguchi-san was intending to pick up. Silently, he acknowledged his greeting with a bow and took the old paper, unfolding it with care.

"Thank you." he said, in a low tone. "Thank you very much, Himura-san." He gave a sideways glance at the sword, and smiled in approval. "True samurai serve those in need, the rest forces those people to serve them, isn´t it? This recent revolution was meant to end with the latter, though too much do I fear that they had just changed of name and office and kept doing the same. Oh, well…By the way, why a reversed blade?"

"Uh?" Taken somewhat aback by the man´s words, Kenshin shifted position uncomfortably. Too many people were having too much information of late, and he didn´t know whether he liked it.

"Your secret is safe with me, I swear." the man placated him. "I know swords have been forbidden, but I´m a real gravestone when I want to!"

_You´d better want to, then!  _Kenshin thought in a mental show of grumpiness. 

"Well…" he started at last, in a careful tone. He might as well make a concession now and then." It´s not a great story, really. I´ve seen blood, I´ve seen death in those dark times, and now I don´t want to see them anywhere anymore, that´s all. This reverse-blade sword cannot kill, and that´s why I use it I the opportunity arives. Not that it arrives too often, though…"

"I see…" Bright enough as to quickly notice Kenshin´s uncomfortableness at talking about himself, Eguchi-san opted by changing subject. "Did Hata tell you everything related with this piece of paper?"

"Most things. "Kenshin´s stance didn´t become less stiff. "Enough, I think."

"Even the fact that maybe it´s _not _an error?"

For a while, after that question, a deep, deadly silence reigned in the house. Kenshin lowered his face, closing his eyes for a moment to steel himself before facing the man again. Oh, how he hated this. How he really, truly, virulently hated this.

"I considered that on my own." he confessed. _I´ve seen too many forgotten treaties, trampled alliances, and trusts broken by the holy needs of a group not to have done so. _he thought also, but kept it to his own heart. 

"But I´m sure it isn´t." he resumed his speech, for a moment´s ardent impulse even forgetting about his selfish wish of peace and quiet. "And even if it is, I will see to it, believe me."

"Really?" Eguchi-san gave him a sidelong glance, surprised. "Do you think you could?"

Could he? 

Oh, in the past he could.

Kenshin lost his eyes on the fleeting void behind the chief´s face. This looked so familiar that he couldn´t help remembering things. Things he fully knew he would need at least ten lifetimes to atone, if this were possible.

_"They don´t agree."_

_"Kill half of them and then we´ll ask again to the other half. The rest of the feud will follow suit"_

"Himura-san.."

"Uh…forgive me." The red-haired young man snapped out of his sinister musings, and made an effort to return to reality. "I will stay here and try to help you as I may. But now, if you will excuse me, I have serious duties as a healer to attend as well."

Eguchi-san didn´t seem surprised at his brusque answer, not even when he stood up. If all, Kenshin could have even said he was looking at him..compassionately.

"Keep your sword here. Please, trust me. You can sleep here too, if you want."

Trust… 

"I trust you, Eguchi-san."Kenshin said slowly. "Trust you indeed."

_It´s the least I can do after you trust me._ he mused to himself, as he put his haori over his shoulders and slid the shoji open to leave.

*     *     *     *     *

"Boil some water, quick!"

Kenshin watched with the corner of his eye how the young mother ran to fulfill his request, and belatedly scolded himself for being so brusque. Sometimes, he was angry at his total unability to issue directions without making the rest of the people believe that it was a matter of life or death.

"Is he grave?"

"Not too much." Guiltily, he brushed the boy´s warm forehead with his hand, and turned back to meet the worried father´s eyes. "I apologise for frightening you. I have…many things in my head of late."

The man looked rather calmed with those words. Getting closer, he sat next to Kenshin at the side of his son´s bed, and made a dismissing gesture with his right hand.

"We all have." he muttered sadly. The tiny lamp he was holding in his left projected a weak light over the child´s pale features, eliciting a whimper and a startle from him.

"That light is too close." Kenshin warned. As the father drew back in renewed concern, he got up and went to dip the piece of fabric for the boy´s forehead in the basin of fresh water. "I will leave you adequate quantities of that medicine I´m going to give him now, enough to aid to his complete recovery. And, as for the other side of the struggle, he´s strong and he can do it. Don´t have a doubt about that."

"Thank you very much. Really." The man watched him put the wet cloth on the child´s forehead with great care, and smiled. "He´s my main concern right now. If I know he´s well, I can even die."

"Die?" Kenshin´s hand froze in the middle of his task. "I suppose you´re figuratively speaking, aren´t you?"

The villager turned back to him and let the lamp down. Both he and his wife, who had just arrived and was standing at the doorstep, gave him a long look, and the red-haired man could easily perceive all the doubt and fear in those eyes.

"Maybe."

And this he couldn´t stand.

"How, maybe? Are you going to let yourself be killed and leaving a son and a wife behind?" Not able to keep all his anger deep inside, he got up, and perceived they were eyeing him in shock now. Of course, he thought ruefully, his temper must have always been the most constant thing they knew. 

"But you don´t understand! "the man snapped in turn, recovering somewhat. "Maybe you can, but we can´t pay that fine! It´s winter, and if we give them what we have we´ll die of hunger. We´ll have to fight, and maybe if I´m dead…"A shocked gasp from his wife made him stop, and he left the sentence in the air. Turning towards her, he shook his head repeatedly, and let out a deep breath. "Is the water boiling, Yori?"

The woman nodded without saying anything, and before Kenshin could say anything she disappeared with a quick stride. Her husband sat down once more, and lowered his head.

"Father?" a tiny, shaky voice asked from the momentarily forgotten couch. "Why…why are you shouting?"

In fractions of second, the ex-assassin was already at the child´s side, feeling his temperature and calming him. Oh, please, kami, let him _not _have heard…

"Nothing is the matter, little one." he muttered. "Your father was worried because…"

"Don´t call me little one!" the boy cried in a weak attempt of a protest. "I´m six already!"

For a moment, even Kenshin had to forget his heart´s oppression and smile at this sally. It was astounding, how he had grown unaccustomed to boys so soon.

"I´m sorry." he apologised with a conciliating tone. "I don´t have sons, just a little daughter, and I´m used to her."

"I don´t look like a girl!" The child´s outrage got even bigger, and this brought a small spark to his father´s forlorn eyes. "Will I get well soon?"

"Yes." Kenshin nodded, "if you´re good and take your medicine." As he saw the boy´s grimace, he shook his head exaggeratedly. "Your friends are having great fun playing with the snow outside. Wouldn´t you want to get well and play with them?"

This seemed to produce the intended effect in his target´s mind, and left him in a ponderative silence for a while. Oh, that was much better.

"The water." The woman put the cup in his hands, staring at him with an unreadable face. Kenshin took it in silence, and mixed the herbs with it with practiced moves.

"Take it, litt…Eichi-kun." he rectified in time. The boy shrugged his nose in disgust.

"It stinks!"

"It will make you better." he answered quickly, leveling his almost weightless body with one of his arms and pressing the cup to his lips. As its content gradually disappeared through them, he stared at an empty corner again, lost into his thoughts once more.

How thankful he was, that Tomoe had been left apart of all this time and was blissfully ignorant to the despair of that people. That despair...it made him mad. A part of him rebelled against it, they had _no _right to feel like that after he had done so much so that they were in peace!

"Yori-san, can you stay with your son while we talk?" he asked somewhat abruptly. The woman nodded at once, and Kenshin could have sworn he had seen some hope in her eyes.

_Yet another person relying on him…_

 "Eizo-san, please, come with me." he said, in a display of authority he seldom used. As if he had been electrified into motion, the man got up and followed, and Kenshin closed the shoji behind them.

"What...do you want, Himura-san?" he asked in a gruff voice, as soon as they were both alone. "If you´re going to tell me that I shouldn´t defend my family…"

"Your family?" Kenshin gave a long intake of breath." What your family needs is _you _to provide for them, not to die in a senseless riot."

"But you still don´t understand at all!" Eizo exploded, evidently full of the pent-up tension. "Most think the same here. If we do not fight we will die of hunger, and our families too."

"It´s an error that´s going to be rectified with a document." Kenshin pointed.

"Why should we believe them? They betrayed the shogun!"

The red-haired man repressed a very, very heavy sigh.

"They will act as they should."

"What if they just need the money?"

Kenshin dug his nails into his arms, and pressed, pressed harder, until he drew blood. If they did that…If they only did that, when he had sold his soul for them….

"No. They won´t do that. Trust me and take good care of your family."

Feeling the man´s astonished eyes burning holes in his back, the ex-assassin got up and slid the shoji open. They could discover him, track him and destroy his life, but he simply had no right to pull back yet.

If they only did that…

_If they only did that, the Bakumatsu would not have ended._

"Now go to the other room, Eizo-san. Your son is calling for you." he muttered as he left, his head lowered in determination.

(to be continued)


	4. Chapter Three: To Live In Peace

**Note: **Sorry. When I made that remark in the last chapter, it was meant as a joke. I wouldn´t complain seriously about lack of reviews. Oh, well…maybe it was my subsconcious speaking in jokes, I won´t deny you that. But it was not meant a s such. ;)

So now..sound of drums rolls here I proudly present the famous chapter that took me two weeks!

**Quiet Life I: Winter Storm**

**Chapter Three: To Live In Peace.**

"Miyoko-chan!"

The child's eyebrows twitched inquisitively, and so did those of the man who was throwing the ball to her. Tomoe stopped in her tracks, suppressing a sigh.

"You shouldn't bother Matsuo-san that much. Where are your manners?"

Miyoko turned back and looked right and left, her hands behind her back. As she faced her mother again, Tomoe could spot in her features a solemn expression that could not hide the mischievous uncertainty she felt whenever she knew she was pushing the limits.

"Don't know."

Matsuo laughed loud.

"Oh, Kami-sama, this girl cracks me!" he exclaimed between guffaws, ruffling her dark hair. "Don't worry, Tomoe-san, she's not being a nuisance at all. I like playing with her. But well, speaking about plays… I have to leave now or my wife will get jealous!"

Those words made Tomoe shake inside, though she hid her emotions well behind a smile as she knelt to slide the shoji open for him. She supposed that he hadn't meant it, but there were many things about these people that would always be a mystery for her. That openness, that loudness bothered her. It made her feel uneasy and lost, as if nothing in the world was in its place anymore, and when Kenshin wasn't there she didn't have anyone to turn to in order to regain a feeling of normalcy. She felt scared of being swept away by their unrestrained actions and their unrestrained words, and she hated not to know what to expect. Whenever she had to fulfil her duties towards the people Kenshin had asked to watch over Miyoko and herself in his absence, she felt absurdly wary.

"Play?" a tiny voice asked, tugging at her left arm. Little by little, she regained her composure, and turned to see Miyoko at her side. In a quick motion, she closed the shoji, and the cold wind ceased blowing inside the house.

"Play? How cheeky you are! "she grumbled, getting up in mild irritation. "You behave like a brat in front of strangers, and now you act as if nothing was the matter?"

The girl lowered her head, and sniffed.

"No stranger," she argued weakly. "Matsuo-san."

Tomoe opened her mouth at once, but closed it in surprise before she was able to say anything. Suddenly feeling stupid for standing in front of her daughter without knowing what to say, she turned back, and headed towards the kitchen fire.

"Okay," she sighed. "If you stay quiet for a while, I will play with you once I've made lunch."

* * *

"I got him, I got him! Quick!"

Kenshin smiled in resignation, and closed his eyes to brace himself for the weight of four village boys falling on top of him as if he was a horse. The snow was cold under his knees, but he didn't feel it too much. He didn't feel much at the moment, in fact, except the little arms of the first boy pressed against his neck and his legs kicking at his back.

"Help!" he cried, eliciting a renewed fit of laughs from the lad. Three others who had arrived running jumped on top of him, laughing too, and now it was his chin what was dipped to the mouth in white ice. His next pleas came as unidentified grunts, what augmented the glee of the little imps even more.

"Listen! It snarls!" one of them observed.

"We hunted the wolf!" a second cried. "Now, let's bring him back to the village!"

"To the village? To the village it's where you're going to return now, you shameless brats!" a sharp female voice cried somewhere behind them. The children froze immediately, and Kenshin felt his body being pulled free from their weight. Spitting snow and brushing his hair, he set an elbow on the ground and sat on it, to meet the figure of Asami-san looming over him.

_Well…or rather over the children_, he corrected himself, trying as he could to regain at least some of his dignity.

"What do you think you're doing? Do you think you can treat an elder like that?" she thundered. The children gladly changed one game for another, and dodged and ran away from her reach among laughs and cries.

"Are you alright, Himura-san?" she asked once they were gone, politely kneeling in front of him to help him get up. "I'm sorry, they're such a pest…"

"Oh, don't worry, Asami-san;" he answered with a conciliating smile, while he struggled to get to his feet by himself. "We were just playing, and I was having fun with them. They're adorable boys… But, did you want to tell me something?"

"Uh…Yes." The woman hesitated, surprised at his answer. " I… my father wants you to come back to the village. He says that they're just about to arrive."

"Arrive..? Oh... I understand." Just in a moment, the serious expression returned to Kenshin's features. "It's the time."

Asami nodded.

"They will arrive at one moment or another," she explained. "We should be... up there, with the other people. They have already gathered to meet them."

"I see." Finishing his attempts at looking presentable with adequate success, Kenshin flashed an encouraging smile. "Let's go, then."

The woman lowered her head, and followed him in silence towards the village.

* * *

As Kenshin rejoined the rest of the people, after taking good care of bandaging again the scar that the children had uncovered in one of their struggles, he couldn't help but be impressed at such a silent and solemn concentration of villagers. Everybody was out on the street, men, women and children, none with weapons - since Eguchi-san had absolutely forbidden to -, but threatening nevertheless, and proud. None of those people would shrink from a fight, the red-haired man mused while he took his place at Eguchi-san's side, at the front of the concentration though in a discreet second row.

_And that is the problem, indeed, _he added to himself in silence.

Of course, it was perfectly justified that they would fight if the necessity arose; he of all people was not going to question that. But he had made a vow, too; the vow that he wasn't going to let anyone die in front of his eyes, and this meant that it was up to him to prevent that situation from taking place. He did not know yet if he was able to do such a thing, and felt in a horrible state of powerlessness without his sword, but he _had _to. If there was something he could know in truth, it was that.

_For all those people._

"So here you are. I thought you had got lost." Eguchi-san's voice greeted him good-naturedly. The old man was obviously trying to break the tension, Kenshin thought. He was familiar with those tactics, if not for any other reason than because, back in the Bakumatsu, most people had used to use them whenever _he _hadgot close to them.

"Your daughter arrived just in time," he answered. "The children in your village are scary."

"Really?" The man frowned. "Were they disrespecting you?"

Kenshin gave him a brief smile, and shrugged his shoulders.

"Rather _riding _me… But do not worry, I was the one who wanted to play with them. I like children…" His voice was lowered to a hushed whisper that even made Eguchi-san lean forwards to hear it. "And, to be frank, after following the path of the sword for so many years, sometimes it seems to me as if nothing could hurt my body anymore."

"Oh." For once, the usually talkative man was at loss as to what to say. The cold wind was pushing mountains of grey clouds towards them, obscuring the sun and fuelling the threat of a new snowstorm. "I... well, that seems quite the thing if you have a bunch of boys at home yourself, ain't it?"

"Indeed." Kenshin stared in deep fixation at some chosen point in front of him, and then sighed. "Indeed."

This definitely killed the conversation between the two for a very long while. The red-haired man fell into one of his characteristic periods of silence out of which no one was able to snap him with mere words, and Eguchi-san, after staring at him wistfully for some time, got back into motion and went to tell something to a man that was metres away from them. In many points of the street, hushed talks were born and died only to be born again minutes after, mingled with the growing howl of the morning wind, and rising in intensity as the time that had been fixed passed and no one had seen any officer come.

"Maybe they've thought better about it?" Kenshin heard a woman suggest in a hopeful voice. "They could have found it was an error and so they won't come anymore."__

"They're most probably going to screw negotiations and come here with an army," another voice, this time of a young man, snorted. "I've heard they've done plenty of things like that."

Kenshin winced, feeling as if salt had been rubbed into his wounds. He needed to concentrate in order to cease listening to these people, or he would go insane. Closing his eyes, he tried to think of Tomoe instead, and how she patiently waited for him while playing with a giggling, little Miyoko who soothed her mother's worried heart with her carefree smile. Thoughts of his wife had never failed to strengthen his resolutions in front of an impending threat in the past, not to speak about distracting him from the anxiousness of waiting…

_And now there's Miyoko too_, the man mused to himself, suppressing a soft chuckle at the remembrance of the two women he loved. Even if it was true - and sometimes evident - that he could not help feeling nostalgia when he saw boys, he still had it in himself to be very proud of his girl. She had an ability of making everyone happy that no one else in his household did possess, and had her mother so wrapped around her finger that she even could make her laugh. If only he could return peacefully and have enough resources as to get her something as a present …

Not likely, though, he sighed. Supposing that he could clear this mess – which was still a thing to see -, there was no way he would have money or goods to be spent in anything else than food or clothing. Toys, moreover, weren't among the usual presents that healed people gave him as payment, for they were very rare and precious things that children inherited from their parents since he didn't know what year of the Edo era. If there were some new ones coming in it was because a wandering seller brought them, but with all the snow there was none travelling at the moment.

"Himura-san! Cease staring into nowhere like that, you're scaring me!" Eguchi-san's voice snapped him away from his thoughts. "Listen, what if we plan a bit what we're going to say and do?"

"Uh? Oh… of course." Swallowing deeply, Kenshin chased definitely all warm family scenes from his mind. "What we should strive for is to make them believe in the document. Another problem we could have right now would be the possibility that the people who come don't have enough authority, or say they don't have it, and insist on taking the document with the seal away with them. This, of course, if they don't come in good faith…"

Eguchi-san waved his hand in dismissal.

"Don't worry about that." For a moment, his lips were curved in a sly grin. "I already considered that particular eventuality."

"You…you have more copies, right?" Kenshin's eyes widened in sudden realisation. "That's why you wanted another…"

"That's right," Eguchi-san nodded. "Anyone needs to have three pairs of eyes and a cunning mind not to be tricked today. I have one, in Atasuke's hands in that moment, and Hata had another. So he didn't tell you anything, huh? Very typical of him, indeed…"

_Underestimated them **again**…_a voice in the ex-hitokiri's mind scolded him. Another part of him, though, couldn't help admiring Eguchi-san's purveying capacity. Whoever thought he could outwit those villagers would have another thing coming!

"So, let me see…We will speak with them, and if things g…oh, no."

"Uh?" The old man stared at the suddenly frowning redhead, in confusion. "What's the matter with you?"

Kenshin let go of a deep breath.

"They're coming," he stated, softly.

* * *

Five minutes later, effectively, the whole group was greeted by the sight of about twenty persons slowly but firmly treading on the snow towards them. Kenshin could notice Eguchi-san's surprised glance fixed on him for a moment, but, fortunately enough, there were more pressing matters to tend to at the moment.

"Atasuke-san, get close to me," the old man hissed to his right hand man, a lean, middle-aged farmer said to be descendant of the head of the biggest clan that had settled in those lands. Instinctively, everybody tensed up and got closer to each other among whispers, and the women began to get behind. Kenshin had wondered why they were going to be there in the first place, but Eguchi-san had reasoned that they would ensure a more relaxing and safe atmosphere. Without them, it would be rebellion and nothing more.

With them, as he had thought then, it _could _be rebellion and nothing more also, depending on these people's intentions. But he had to concede that the old chief could have a point.

"Greetings, noble representants of the Meiji. I hope you have had a good and safe journey" Eguchi-san began, walking some steps towards them. The one who seemed to be the leader, a short, dark-haired man whose Western clothes had been rather ill-treated by their short voyage through the snow from the closest post, nodded in return, and made a sign for the others to stop. At least fifteen of them were armed and in military garb, Kenshin calculated with some dismay.

"Greetings, and thank you," the man said, in a curt and raspy voice. " I'm Araki Yugoro, aide of the most honourable prefect of this province, and these are all loyal and trusted members of his staff who have endured days of hard travel under the unrelenting wind and snow. But it was an urgent matter that made us attempt this journey, so here we are. "

"It's an error!" someone cried among the waiting people. The newcomers lifted their heads up in alert, and many shifted uncomfortably. By now, Kenshin's uneasiness at being without a sword was starting to turn into an overbearing anguish that didn't allow him to form words. If someone was harmed…

_No, stay in your place. You are not here to fight. You're here to see that this is solved peacefully!,_ he chided himself, though almost at the same moment he was already wincing at the bitter irony. Keep the peace, _him_? How could he have thought he would be able to do anything of the sort?

"Oh, nothing. I think I heard a noise,"Araki Yugoro shrugged his nose in a somewhat arrogant gesture. To Kenshin's approval, Eguchi-san did not even blink.

"He was speaking untimely, but what he said was true." he said. "It's an error and we can prove it."

Araki's frown increased.

"Are you implying that the orders the Prefect got and that he gave us were wrong, - and that he didn't check them?"

Eguchi nodded to Atasuke, who made a couple of steps forward and produced the old and rugged paper from the sleeve of his own haori. The old man took it himself, and handed it to the prefect's envoy in silence. Now, the rumours and murmurations were increasing to a point that they almost became a noise; as Kenshin thought then, the tension could almost be cut with a knife. He had been in countless tense encounters like those, as Katsura's bodyguard, but somehow none of them had mattered to him nearly as much. Since he had come to live here everything had been so different…

"What is…?" Araki read the document with a sombre face, then turned slowly towards one of the other men who were dressed Western style, to show it to him.

"This seal is of the Imperial Army. We were allied with them since the first moment they occupied those territories," Eguchi explained. "This village was very worried and hurt that this alliance had been forgotten."

Kenshin could have sworn that hours passed without anybody of them saying anything. Even the murmurs had ceased, and all that could be heard was the rustle of the paper as the delegates passed it from one to another with an excruciating formality. Could they…?

_..have come in good faith?_

In this case, he concluded, itwas most likely their superior who was the corrupt one. He did not need much effort to draw a portrait of the possible man in his mind, the kind of man who got into every kind of intrigues to get a prefecture and then abuse the villages he had under his care, and cheat them of their ways of subsistence in order to get richer. They were the kind of people he had vowed once to make disappear… and, in the end…

Araki and another man were whispering something to each other, and, snapping out of his musings, Kenshin sharpened his hearing to get what they were saying at unawares.

"We can't allow this," was what Araki was muttering at that moment. The other, apparently, had still some misgivings about the matter, and was complaining in a rather unsure tone.

"But there's a seal, we _can't _deny them that! He told us that they had no evidence left…"

"Then say it's false and invent whatever reason you want! Do you think they will be able to argue a thirty-word sentence full of technicisms?"

The red-haired man felt his blood boil with renewed ire. In good faith… In perfect credulity that they would be able to deal with it easily, rather. He had never felt so tempted to return to his old ways ever before.

"Please, tell me, old man.," With an ostensible shrug of his nose, the man who had talked with Araki gave the document back to Eguchi-san. "Where did you find that piece of paper?"

Eguchi-san and Atasuke paled. The rest of the people were like suddenly struck by a commotion, and like one person they moved towards them, murmuring and shouting injuries.

"Don't you _dare _come next to me!" Araki threatened, making a sign to the armed effectives that had come with him. To Kenshin it looked more like a show of effect than anything else, since the soldiers were already more than prepared to kill whoever got near. Definitely time to intervene, he thought, if he wanted to prevent a massacre.

But, just as he was going to lift his voice, swallowing strongly, another unexpected shout made him shut his mouth in surprise.

"Quiet, everybody!"

Kenshin turned his head back, and his eyes widened at what he saw. It was Eguchi-san who had talked, the man who had looked to him so shaken by the events that he had doubted he could take care of the situation anymore. He was standing in the middle of his frantic people, his hands firmly draped around his walking staff, and in his pose, with his jaw set in determination, the red haired man couldn't see anything else than sheer authority. Even the envoys were obviously surprised at his demeanour, though Kenshin had little confidence that it would last too much.

"This is not the place to discuss things, but to greet each other and give good wishes," the old man continued. "If you have something to discuss with me, you're invited to do it in my house."

This time, the newcomers needed few glances to come to a decision about the offer. If there had been a battle they would have won, or so they probably thought with good reason, but even they were subtler than _that_, Kenshin thought.

"All right," Araki said, with a tone that implied no less that he was doing the village a great favour. "We will."

The turbine of displacements and arrangements that took place after this consent pushed Kenshin forwards and backwards, but he didn't put much effort to avoid being swayed. At one moment of the confusion, though, he was able to catch Eguchi-san's glance, and the cold desperation and the plea of help that it emanated shook him to the core.

_All your strength…_

Before he was even able to have a conscience of his own reactions, Kenshin reached instinctively for his sword, and shivered at the remembrance that it wasn't there anymore. Breathing heavily, he turned back, and after he had disentangled himself from the last group of agitated people he walked away from the turmoil, away from everybody.

* * *

When they had arrived to that place, three years and a half ago, it had been springtime. He could remember very well Tomoe's exhaustion as they sat under the oak tree next to the first houses, and the girl who had smiled shyly at them and then ran to tell the others that "there had arrived a couple to sell something." She had been the first person in the village he had seen, and even when years passed and he already knew everybody, met her parents, knew her name was Mayo and healed at least three fevers of hers, she still held some kind of special aura for him. Somehow, when he had seen her smile he had shivered, and decided to stay there forever. Maybe he was mad, but… she had brought him remembrances of his sister, the one that had died in a similar place so many years ago at that same age.

What he never doubted, though, was that his decision had been an impulse of the heart. And the most lucky one of his life yet.

To lead a simple life, a normal life, had always been his wish and Tomoe's, though none of them dared to pretend they deserved that much. If Kenshin had been alone, without ties, he would have continued wandering through Japan until he had atoned for all. Or at least he preferred to think that he would have done so…for, the circumstances being very different, he couldn't help feeling some guilty relief that mingled with the suffocation. He gave in to the belief in the new opportunity he had been offered, in a place that was so similar to the one where he had been born, and living a life like the life he would have led. With him, he had a woman who had been offered a second chance, too, after her old life had been quenched, and in her womb, she bore the child of both, conceived on the eve of the dawn of the new era. What could have ever been more appropriate?

Those years had been quiet, calm and with plenty of moments to think for the first time in years. The remembrances of his crimes and the horrid turmoil of blood of which he had been the vortex tortured him, and the feeling of being alone among a sea of unsuspecting innocents, lying to them and making them trust him without knowing who he really was had returned to him in a rush. He had tried to rid himself from the need of the sword without success, and was pestered by constant fears of Tomoe being unable to part with her past in a similar way, of his little girl discovering him while he freed his ki, and of what both of them could be able to hide from him behind glassy eyes. It had been hard, so hard… but also, as he knew now, good for him. By putting a great effort on it he had gradually learned to face some of those fears, and to drive others away. He had taught himself to smother, in the end, those who couldn't be dealt with otherwise, in order to be able to help people who needed it and not give Tomoe or Miyoko any opportunity of being unhappy. When the Bakumatsu had ended he was nothing more than a hitokiri, and now that killing monster was just a part of him, important but a part nevertheless. And he could have achieved so much more still….

Kenshin breathed deeply, and brushed some snow off his haori in a distracted gesture. To think of what he could have achieved while several villages were at the brink of disaster was nothing but selfishness. He felt terribly selfish, sitting there while Eguchi-san was in his house with those men. Hadn't he been the one who had almost had a fit of rage moments before, when those soldiers had been threatening the weaponless people and his sword wasn't there? The one who had vowed to himself to do whatever he could for the sad wife and the sick child of that man?

_But, why? Why must things be like that?_ he could not help rebelling once again. Just because he had tried to escape? Because he had fled while being responsible for the victory of those people who oppressed others just as the ones he had killed had done before? Because he did not want to face the results of what he had done and even ponder the idea that the deaths of the people he had killed could have been in vain?

But, what about Tomoe and Miyoko, whose peace and safety he would have jeopardized otherwise? He had thought of them, and only of them, when he had made that decision. And now, if he did what he had to do… wouldn't he jeopardize it completely? Could he do that, to them?

"Himura-san. Himura-san…!"

"Uh?" Feeling his heart give a jump, Kenshin opened his eyes at once, and saw a young girl tugging insistently at his right arm. He hadn't ever seen her before, but it puzzled him that even deep in his thoughts he had allowed her to surprise him in that way. "What do you want?"

"Everybody is crowding gathering at Eguchi'san's door," she said, retreating one step and playfully shifting her weight from one leg to the other. "Why are you here?"

The red-haired man blinked, surprised at her bluntness. He was only used to that behaviour in boys, not in adorable-looking five year old creatures.

"I'm thinking here for a while. Making decisions," he tried to explain with some attempt of a smile. The girl furrowed her brow.

"You said you would help them."

Now, Kenshin's surprise increased even more. What the…?

"And what do you know about that?"

"I was sent to bring you back there," she announced with a petulant gesture. "They need you."

"I was going myself," he protested, slightly ashamed. "But it's not wise to rush into a situation while you're still carrying all your weaknesses with you."

"They will be threatened nonetheless, Himura-san."

Kenshin momentarily forgot his efforts to struggle to his feet, and stared at the girl.

"What?"

"Your wife and your little daughter," she explained. "If there's a revolt, they will suffer too, and war will reach the child of the new era. Don't feel guilty, you're so good at that! You're doing it for them, too, okay?"

The red haired man opened his mouth several times, but couldn't bring himself to utter any sound. As much as he tried to rub his eyes, the girl was still there, her hands behind her back and an enervating smile on her lips.

"Have you gone dumb? Come on, Himura-san!" she urged him, irritated at his lack of response. "You never thought so much before making decisions!"

Unable now to suppress a shiver that shook his whole body, Kenshin continued fighting with his own unruly tongue. He had to speak, to ask her, before he went completely insane…

_Who are you?_

"Okay. I can't waste my time anymore, so see you there!" she suddenly cried in an exasperated sigh. Skilfully dodging Kenshin's weak attempt to hold her back , she gave him a quick bow, and ran away.

As the red-haired man lay there in total distress, a strong breeze began to tear apart the cloud masses above his head, allowing the first shreds of light to pass through. Under the bright sunrays that wrung terribly brilliant reflections on the white snow plain, Kenshin turned his eyes again at the running little figure, and for a moment he could see a shimmering red spark dancing in the locks of her hair.

* * *

An ominous silence reigned outside the house where the important men of the village were talking with the envoys of the prefect. Everyone, men and women, were quietly crowding the space in front of the closed shoji, the slightest of their movements warily watched by the soldiers that had remained outside with them. Any word, any noise that someone was able to catch voyaged promptly from whispers to ears, and sometimes caused a brief stirring that others took always care of hushing with vehemence.

It was into this scenario, where the man solemnly walked. As soon as the first man noticed him, he could hear the sea of whispers starting once more, and many a face turned to give him a surprised, maybe accusing stare, but when their eyes met the steely spark of his, and his uncovered, angry red cross-shaped scar, most expressions of censure turned to astonishment. Nobody hindered him when he began to cross the human sea in the direction of the door, and even the soldiers just saw him pass by and muttered something among themselves after he was gone out of their reach

"Hi... Himura-san…"Asami stood as the last obstacle, her tall body covering the shoji. He stopped in front of her in a demanding gesture, but when he saw her eyes widened in distress he forced himself to soften his expression somewhat.

_There was fear, always fear in every eye…_

"Please, Asami-san," he said. The woman slowly nodded, regaining her composure as she could before she stepped aside.

As Kenshin put his hand over the old wood, angry voices crowding his ears from inside, he allowed himself a last fleeting instant of hesitation. Behind that door, a new war was waiting for him. It was a confrontation where he could lose his humanity, where he could be reduced to nothing more than what he had been before.

_But no, not like before. Before, he had fought for an abstraction; now he would do it to preserve and honour what he had already found._

_Wasn't it so?_

A sudden noise of a hand being slammed on a wooden table broke his musings, and he could clearly hear an irate deep voice lifted over the others.

"Why do you keep babbling? It's useless! You stand alone against the government, against law and against Tuyunoki Suyukazu!"__

The arm pressed against the shoji froze for a moment, then stiffened in a final determination that even smothered all the pain and the nausea. With a quick but firm movement, the door was slid open, and the red-haired man was immediately pierced by eight pairs of eyes that turned, surprised, to find the reason of the intrusion.

_Tuyunoki…Suyukazu…_

"Himura-san…"

"Who are you and why do you interrupt us?" the same man that had given the document back asked him acidly. Kenshin did not mind the tone, for he was already more than used to it. Instead, he advanced some steps towards them, and let the candlelight fall over his hair, features and cross-shaped scar on his cheek.

"As I suspected," His voice was steely, and as cold as the snow which paved the ground outside. "Tuyunoki is the corrupt one."

(to be continued)


	5. Epilogue One: The Warmth Of The Sun

**Note: **I´m aware you will feel a bit out of your depths at first. Sorry…give it a chance. Me and experimentation…;) I can try to calm you saying that someone has already given her approval to the shift of perspective, but I´m aware of how tastes vary…

Certain answers:

**Supernaturalove: **I´m aware of your criticism and I had already received it from other sources…The problem isn´t the distribution of the stories and chapters, but the order in which I wrote and published them. Still, while waiting for summer to write Quiet Life IV, the really big one, I will put a date in the title of each Quiet Life part, so that people can know how old the characters were at each moment and how many years had passed between story and story. (I try to say Miyoko´s age somehow in each one, though)

**Wistful-Eyes: **The number or gender of Kenshin´s siblings isn´t known. –or at least it´s not **"**canonical**".**

Well, now, one more to go! Thanks to Margit for beta and comments, of course.

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**Quiet Life I: Winter Storm******

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**Epilogue I: The Warmth of the Sun.******

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"Open your mouth."

Kenshin could not help but give a brief smile as he noticed the quickness and enthusiasm with which the boy obeyed his request. With a practiced eye, he inspected the throat and then drew back to give a small nod.

"You can close it now," he had to add moments later, amused.

The child, who had kept his position bravely - and exaggeratedly - even after finding himself alone, blushed now somewhat, and closed his lips tightly. Kenshin wouldn't have been able to say whether he found his anxious state and almost transcendental looks funny or moving. He felt like a judge passing sentence, and even if the worst case wouldn't be too severe, by looking at the child anyone could have sworn that it was a matter of life and death.

Probably, for him it was.

"Eichi-kun," he smiled, feeling his patient's forehead one last time before making his decision. Or passing his sentence, whatever. "You have been a good boy who has done everything that his parents and I told him. I think you're already well healed, so you can go out if you want."

"Really??" The boy jumped at once, pure happiness written over his glowing face. If there was any doubt about his diagnosis, the red-haired man thought with a smile, this certainly proved its accuracy more than anything else.

"He said I can go out!" His parents tried to follow the little cyclone with puzzled glances, but their overjoyed son overwhelmed them with his almost godlike-speed movements towards the door. "He said I can go out! I'm going to play in the snow with…!"

"Wait!" A red blur flashed through the air in his direction, and grabbed his kimono. "I'm not finished yet!"

The boy´s eyes widened in shocked surprise.

"Bu…but, didn´t you…say….?" he asked feebly, sending sidelong glances to his parents. Yori crossed her arms over her breasts, and shook her head in reprobation.

"Listen to Himura-san, Eichi-kun."

"Of course I said you could go out," Kenshin was quick in reassuring him before his worry could increase and turn into a pout. "But not just like that. You will go out only after your mother has put on you a good more deal of clothing. And only when the sun is out, understood?"

"Yes!" the boy nodded, his enthusiasm refound as he pushed Yori inside the other room of the house.

"Poor boy," Kenshin remarked to his father, absently staring at the spot where they had been before disappearing. "So many days caged inside must have been a true torture."

"Torture? Hah!" Eizo grumbled. "Torture for us! Those last four days after he had got up from bed have been madness at home, believe me. I wouldn't wish them to my worst enemy!"

"I'm sorry for that. There wasn't any other option," the red-haired healer apologised. Those sincere, but careful words worked like a rebuke, and Kenshin could see the man suddenly looking elsewhere with an awkward expression. In the brief silence that arose after that, both could clearly hear Eichi talking excitedly between his mother's soft advertences.

"No…it´s me who is sorry, Himura-san," he said at last. "You have done so much… Somehow I keep forgetting it, maybe because I'm not able to believe it yet."

Now, it was Kenshin the one who felt awkward. Giving a long sigh, he took some steps forward, then knelt next to the table once more.

"I just had a part on the negotiations, that´s all," he tried to explain for the hundredth time. As he thought ruefully, though, the hopes he had put in convincing people of that had been much more considerable the first time he had tried. "Eguchi-san invited me."

"Don't put yourself down!" Eizo scolded him in good-natured anger. "Everybody knows that those people were behaving like arrogant sons-of-a- bitch before you went in, and that they didn't seem convinced of what Eguchi-san told them at all. But then, you made your big entrance that left everybody speechless, and they left in five minutes."

"Fifteen," Kenshin argued lamely. Oh, why couldn't they just be happy and _forget_, like so many other people he had known?

"I thought that the samurai were all cowards that only looked brave in front of peasants, who do not have swords or power," the man continued in a confidential tone, as if he hadn't even heard him. "Sorry if I'm insulting you, but that's what everybody thinks around here, more or less…" he clarified with - in Kenshin´s opinion - a completely unexpected sense of delicacy.

"But what you did made us change of opinion a bit. I…well, you know, I was a bit nervous those days. Thank you. Thank you… with all my heart."

In that moment, fortunately for Kenshin, the awkward scene was interrupted by the merry boy and his mother, who emerged from the inner part of the house. Eichi was now wearing about two haoris that were too long for him, but, judging by his movements, he still felt as light as a feather.

"Goodbye, Father, Mother! Goodbye, Himura-san!" he cried out, sliding the shoji open with effort.

"Eichi-kun! Say thank you to Himura-san!" Eizo chided him. The boy turned back immediately, and attempted a clumsy bow.

"Thank you, Himura-san," he recited, before scampering off to his long-denied freedom.

"Well… I´m afraid I should be leaving now." Kenshin got up with determination, and grabbed his medicine box. There went one reason to stay here any longer, a part of him thought, though the other knew only too well that he couldn't leave until all the problem ended _in truth._ The envoys, not to speak about their superior, hadn't given a closure to the affair _fulminantly, _as most people of the village believed, and the second stage had not yet begun. But if he had to admit one thing, it would be that he was finding it increasingly difficult to live being constantly thanked for something he wanted everybody to forget as soon as possible, that wasn't still a sure thing in the very least, and that, above all, had been achieved solely through the weight of a name of horror and execration. Worse still, each time some villager spoke with him about that event, he remembered the situation, their faces, and the guilty pleasure he had felt at his sudden transformation in a figure of terror for those viper-like minions of that corrupt despot whose life he had saved long ago. Oh, yes… he felt less than comfortable with those memories.

"You're leaving already?" Eizo san looked flabbergasted. "I was expecting to invite you to have lunch with us…"

"Thank you very much for your kindness, but I'm afraid I still have to see other sick people," he explained, walking towards the shoji. "And I already told Eguchi-san I would eat with him today; so it would be a greatly impolite thing to tell him I'm not going when they already have things prepared."

"Then… can you come tomorrow?" the man insisted. "I haven't even paid you anything yet for healing my son, so we could arrange that affair during the meal!"

Kenshin stared fixedly at the floor under his feet, and repressed a sigh. Once more, he was trapped. And he supposed it was fair: the man who had even thought about dying ten days ago had now returned to life, and the person he considered to be his saviour was him. For that man, there were no considerations about how far did an assassin's hand reach in times of peace, he only knew that his problems had been unexpectedly, almost miraculously solved by his intervention.

"So what, Himura-san? Is it decided?"

The red-haired man lifted his glance, and smiled.

"Thank you very much, Eizo-san. I… accept your invitation with pleasure."

_How I wish I could have you here at my side, Tomoe,_ he thought once more, mournfully, as he stepped out and closed the wooden shoji behind his back.

* * *

While Kenshin was walking through the village, children's shouts and shrieks gracing his ears from the distance, he was assaulted by a very much breathless errand-boy.

"Himura…san…" he tried to speak among ragged intakes. Kenshin silenced him with a gesture, and set to wait for the message as patiently as he could.

"Eguchi-san has… received a message," the boy finally managed to blurt out.

"A message?" the red-haired man repeated dumbly. "A message from whom?"

"The prefect."

Hearing his own heart give a leap inside his chest, the man turned back, and headed at once towards the old chief's house leaving the stunned errand boy behind.

* * *

Kenshin could feel the surprised eyes of the passers-by following his trail while he walked at a frightful speed towards Eguchi-san's house. Murmurations were lost in a blur, though, and questions and greetings went unanswered… he had no time to care for that.

He was prepared to deal with threats. He would even face the inevitable revelation of his identity that by a twist of things had been preserved the last time. Having already gone that far, he knew that he would have to deal with anything, and, more than that, he knew he _could. _Even if the ways to be used went completely against his principles and the rules of his quiet life, he had decided to help those people.

As those thoughts crowded his mind, the young man began to fall in a slower pace inadvertently, until he definitely stopped in front of Eguchi-san's house. From inside he could hear the animated voices of several people floating in the air, and, as he listened carefully to them, the first thing he realised was that they weren't lifted in anger, but in merriment. Surprised, he stayed still, delaying his entrance for a moment.

"Are you joking?" It was the voice of the chief of another of the nearby villages, the young Tankoshitsu.

"Not at all!" _Atasuke,_ _of course, _Kenshin sighed. "It happened in this very place!"

"Ssssh." As always, Eguchi-san´s intervention was a conciliating one. "Not so loud."

"As we were there arguing with those bastards, the shoji was slid open, and he entered." Atasuke continued, barely following his reconvention. "But who do you think that entered, the little healer? Oh, noo… He had totally changed, and looked like one of those samurai of the past, without sword and all. His voice had turned so cold it sent shivers down my spine, and his eyes had changed colour!"

"Changed colour? Now, if you expect me to believe _that…_!"

"Well, Atasuke-san, I do believe this is subjective," the old chief's prudent voice let itself be heard once more. "I think it was an effect provoked by the disposition of the lights. He was facing the candle."

"Forgive me, Eguchi-san, but I think they really turned yellow," Atasuke insisted.

"Well…" Tankoshitsu was evidently starting to get impatient with the side discussion. "And then what?"

"Then, the room went silent, and one of the bastards asked who he was and what he was doing there…as if the village and Eguchi-san´s house were theirs, brief. He said that now he knew that the prefect guy was the corrupt one, go figure! …and in such a tone… As if he was a very important person and had discovered them doing something unlawful."

"They _were _doing something unlawful." Suddenly compelled to enter and start to put order in the sea of gossip about him, Kenshin slid the shoji open and bowed. "Greetings, Eguchi-san, Tankoshitsu-san, Atasuke-san."

"Oh… greetings, Himura-san." The latter looked somewhat flustered, and invited him to sit down with a nervous gesture. "I… we were discussing the latest events with our newly-arrived friend."

As he knelt next to Atasuke, Kenshin felt at once the incommodating weight of Tankoshitsu´s inquiring glance set on him, sizing him up with a very new appreciation. That man had been always friendly enough to him… friendly to the point of teasing him somewhat about his height. Now, he was obviously thinking twice about him for the first time in his life and the object of his scrutiny couldn't help but wish once more that things returned to normal once more and everybody forgot about that affair.

"I see," he replied, kneeling in front of the table. "Those were… uhm, quite interesting negotiations."

"_Interesting_ seems to me a quite mild word to describe them, Himura-san." Eguchi-san chuckled from his sitting position next to the fireside.

"So you are a retired samurai, they tell me…" the younger chief commented, arching his eyebrows. "Aren't you a mite young for that?"

"I was eighteen when the Boshin war started," Kenshin answered with his most charming smile. Oh, as if there wasn't anything he hated more than to be in the middle of a talk about _himself…___

"And what do you think they did?" Atasuke continued then, as if there hadn't been any pause in-between. "At first, they looked at each other in astonishment, just as we were doing. They whispered things to each other that we couldn't hear, and looked worried… And when he told them," at this point, his imitation of Kenshin´s Battousai mode almost made the imitated party wince, "that of _Were you told these papers were illegal, or weren't you told about their existence at all?_, they…"

_Enough! _Kenshin´s mind screamed in anguish. He had to stop that tale, somehow…

"You sent for me, didn't you, Eguchi-san?" he asked, as respectful as he could. "I came quickly because I heard you had received a message from the prefect this morning…"

"Uh? Oh, yes… I sent that lad about ten minutes ago." To the red-haired swordsman's surprise, the old chief grinned. "You arrived just in time."

"Just in… time?" Kenshin repeated, feeling that rather nasty sensation that people felt when they started to spot the existence of a conspiracy around them. "Just in time for what?"

"To grace our narration with your presence, of course!" Atasuke smiled in triumph. "Now, will you tell Tankoshitsu-san what was the face of that… how was he called, Akari..?

"Araki," Kenshin corrected mechanically. He was trapped, indeed.

"Well, tell him how he did react when you asked him those things. And then, the other things that you asked him!"

"I asked him what you have mentioned, and some other questions regarding the orders that he had received," he surrendered at last. Better to be the one who informed the rest about his own doings… "I have lived in cities, have been involved in the Boshin war at the side of the Ishin Shishi, and there I learned some things. It's a common trick trying to look like someone who knows better, and I've seen it played hundreds of times in front of my eyes."

"But… are they _that _stupid?" Tankoshitsu shrugged his nose, still a bit sceptical. "I mean, if they're in those high posts, it must be because they are at least clever, isn't it?"

"Or because they do convincingly pretend that they are," Eguchi came unexpectedly to Kenshin´s defence. "I saw it clearly that morning. There was a moment when I, too, had to appear as someone without doubts, without worries or fears, and they had a moment of hesitation. Himura-san only did it far better than me. I wouldn't ever have gone that far as to pretend that I knew things they didn't!"

"And the prefect?"

"The prefect?" Suddenly interested, Kenshin jerked his head up. "Has he said something?"

"Indeed he has," The younger chief pointed to his elder in an informative gesture. "He received the courier this morning, and there was a letter from the prefect, saying that he was sorry for the administrative error."

_Administrative…**error**?_

For a moment, the red haired man was unable to speak, so great was the feeling of gratitude to the heavens for having listened to all his prayers. He even forgot where he was sitting, the interrogation and taxation he was being subjected to, and even Atasuke's singing of his feats.

So…was it true? _Had the name of Battousai done something good, for once?_

Oh, he could imagine _so_ well Tuyunoki's face when his envoys told him that the legendary hitokiri was casually around the village he had wanted to plunder, and had asked them so many interesting questions about his activities…

"That Aka… Ara…whatever his name is, who had started so cocky, ended up answering in monosyllables to all his questions," Atasuke continued. "During the interrogation, we began to snap away from the surprise, and as we looked at each other we could see ourselves starting to smile at the show."

"It was funny, I have to admit it," Eguchi nodded. "And, better still, it was working. "

"Oh, yes. I could definitely check this when the youngest among them, an arrogant-looking little creature, got up from the table and started storming some nonsense about "who-are-you-to-speak-to-us-in-that-way". Remember? The man who was sitting next to him paled, and grabbed his arm violently."

Once more, Kenshin felt pierced by glances, and had to suppress the urge to roll his eyes in resignation.

"And how could you manage to inspire in them _that _degree of respect, Himura-san?" Tankushitsu inquired.

"Dear lad!" As it was becoming usual, Eguchi-san came to Kenshin´s rescue. "It was their superior who could be left in evidence …and he is an important man. Any slip of their tongues could later be used by the prefect to blame them for the whole thing and get away with it. They were walking on burning coals and they knew it."

"But, once again," Tankoshitsu asked. "What about the prefect's letter?"

Now it was Kenshin who replied, before Eguchi could even think of a response.

"Those powerful people play dirty, but they only do it with people who live far away from the centres of power, and that aren't used to how things work in them. The moment that there's a suspicion that they might know, that they have kept copies of a treaty, that they might manage to leave the other side in evidence somehow, they retreat. There are people_ above _them, who don't need any more disturbances in this country. They came thinking they would fool us, but they found the whole village ready to start a rebellion, a chief who had kept different copies of a treaty signed years ago, the meaning of which he knew perfectly, and a samurai who knew something about how those things work. Brief; their only option was to start a small war here, of which many people would come to hear. We're four villages, and on friendly terms with many more."

"If people heard about this, an alarm would ring in many places, and there would be important doubts about the trustworthiness and loyalty of the government in power," Tankoshitsu added, apparently more convinced. "I see…The government is so new and the end of war is so recent that there are constant dangers of new uprisings."

"And the person _above _that guy might not be amused with this," Atasuke finished. "Oh, if you had only seen the faces of those envoys when they took their leave! Himura-san told us to escort them and him until the end of the village."

Kenshin folded his arms over his knees.

"If your people got too enthusiastic, I feared for their lives," he explained. "Besides, we didn't know how this would end, either."

"It ended fantastically," Atasuke grinned. "The best thing happened precisely when they were going to leave and we were saying our farewells. They were trying to gather what little dignity they had left, and told us that they would communicate all we had said to the Honourable and Glorious Prefect, or whatever. And then, as they got to Himura-san…"

"Oh, _again_?" Kenshin mumbled, trying to hide his incommodity. Most unfortunately, he was very aware of what would come next… yet another time. "Isn't this old enough already?"

But, as the red-haired man had already been able to check in the past days, the person who thought he could stop a _villager _when he was just about to make a joke in front of an audience, however reduced it might be, had another thing coming.

"They bade him farewell calling him Himura-_dono_!" the chief's right hand man informed everyone with a flourish. "Himura-dono! I hadn't heard that in my whole life!"

"Some people here," and with this, Eguchi set an intent glance on the one who had just spoken, "were calling him "Himura-dono" for days. Poor fellow."

"Oh, on the contrary," Kenshin was quite good at gritting his teeth while presenting the rest of the world with a beatific smile. "I did not mind it at all… though I'm, eh, acutely aware of how inappropriate it is."

"I see...", Tankoshitsu was starting to regain his mischievous grin, as things fell into a logical place inside his mind once more. "Well, Himura-dono… would your Highness agree to travel with me tomorrow back to my village to see to the sick there? Our healer is a bit... indisposed, and he has asked for help."

Kenshin sighed, suppressing a quick - and tempting- sally.

"Tomorrow I have to honour a compromise, and there are still people who need my assistance… but if you wish to wait until the day after tomorrow, I will gladly go with you."

"You honour me," the young chief grinned again, getting up and arranging his clothes. "Well…if you will excuse me, Eguchi-san, I have to visit my relatives now. Something, by the way, tells me that I'm going to hear a lot more of versions about the tale today."

"Don't pay much attention to gossip," the high chief warned him as he made a gesture of dismissal. "People come with a new story each day."

"I'll take it into account, thanks." Tankoshitsu walked towards the door, and opened the shoji. "Are you coming with me, Atasuke-san?"

"Of course," The addressed one threw a quick look towards Kenshin and Eguchi-san, and then bowed. "If you excuse me…"

"Of course you're excused," the old man smiled. As soon as they had seen them disappear, though, his face acquired a more serious expression. "Uh, well… I'm sorry for the inconveniences, Himura-san."

Kenshin promptly waved the remark off.

"Oh, don't worry, Eguchi-san. It's normal that they would react that way," he answered. "By the way… can I see that letter?"

"Here you are." The old chief took the folded paper and threw it to him. Kenshin caught it promptly in the air, and opened it with one hand. "It's a most funny reading. He notifies us of an "administration error", that, of course, happened because they are "trying to put order into a sea of chaos that the previous regime left", and that "he is sorry in the name of all who abnegatedly work with him to achieve that glorious task." The hypocrites!"

"Well, at least they put things right." Kenshin replied, folding the paper again. "That's all that matters, isn't it? Maybe the blunder will make him consider some things that he hadn't considered before."

"May Heaven hear you. But, changing a bit of subject… is it true then that you're leaving in two days?"

"Yes. I'm heading for the other two villages now, to take care of the sick as I do every winter."

"Then, I hope you won't leave me here in the whole ignorance of some questions I wished to ask you," the old man retorted with a sly smile. As Kenshin noticed it, he could not help feeling _very_ alarmed again. His heart sank in his chest. "But I have being dreadfully impolite from beginning to end. Tea?"

"No, thanks," To say the truth, Kenshin didn't wish to have anything at the moment. "What do you… want to ask me?"

_Of course, that one would be on a whole different level. Not the person to swallow that trash about simple cocky attitudes scaring the people in power.___

_Should have known since the beginning, shouldn't he?___

"I must confess I was rather… surprised that day," Eguchi-san started, in the most suspiciously sweet tone Kenshin had ever heard from him. "But it's now when I'm decidedly astonished, after having read that letter, and above all after having read the message that was adjoined to it."

"Adjoined message?" The red-haired man saw black for an instant, but managed somehow to keep his composure. "What… adjoined message?"

"The prefect asks me, confidentially of course, if I know who you are… and to this question, I've decided that I can only give a very partial answer. That's why I wanted to ask you."

Kenshin closed his eyes for a while, trying to concentrate as he could and think with his own mind. He shouldn't be surprised. He had taken the risk, hadn't he? It would have been a real miracle that no one ended up by knowing who he was, so he had considered it as a price to pay since the very first moment. Besides… that man deserved to know. Unlike the Meiji authorities, he was the true authority of the place he lived in. He was understanding.

_And maybe, just maybe, he could…keep his secret.___

But, what if he didn't? What if he shunned him, like the rest? What would Tomoe do?

_But... why not? He had always trusted him, had he not?___

And, after all, he owed him a favour, too, didn't he?

"I…" he started at last, inhaling deeply. "I took part in the Boshin war, and in the Bakumatsu since an early stage. I was in Kyoto for long… among the Ishin Shishi factionaries. As someone important, to tell the truth, but not exactly in the good sense."

Eguchi-san nodded, apparently not surprised. Somehow, Kenshin did not know exactly why, he felt comforted by that gesture, but he did not continue for a while.

_It was so hard…___

"Am I wrong if I say that you're fleeing from your past, and that this is why you decided to live here with your family, in this isolated place?"

The ex-hitokiri lifted his violet eyes towards the man, and fixed them in his comprehensive, sharp gray ones. Though he knew that this was not possible, in that moment he couldn't help but wonder if maybe the man didn't know already.

"Not exactly fleeing," he answered with firm pride. "I am returning to it each day, in order to atone for it. It's... in a way, it is what makes me wake up every morning."

"I see." Unexpectedly, Eguchi-san got up from his sitting place with a strong dismissive gesture, and walked towards the door, breaking the tense situation that had been created between the two. "Well, I'm aware that there are people with secrets. Most of us have them, in fact." He leaned on the inner shoji, and, slowly, a smile started to give shape to his features. "But you and your secrets saved my village, and I won't ever forget this. Now, can you wait here for a moment? I'm going to ask my wife about the meal. Rice with herbs, herbs with rice… very original, huh?"

For instants, that seemed as long as ages, Kenshin felt too overwhelmed to say a word. All he could do was stare at his hands, carelessly folded in his lap, to Eguchi-san and then back at his hands. The weight of everything he bore on his shoulders came upon him in one swift and terrible moment, the blood he had shed, the people who had cried, and the terror in his name. He saw Tomoe crying for the man he had murdered in a dark street, the assassin trying to comfort her, Tomoe leaning on him, and Miyoko reaching towards his nose - and his scar, that was so close to it in his open red horror - with an innocent smile. He saw the terror-stricken faces of the envoys of the prefect, having met the legendary hitokiri Battousai face to face, and then Yori-san's eyes when she saw that her husband was back.

He saw the pale and unhealthy, but always mischievous smile of his sister, getting more and more blurred in the distance as she disappeared in a red haze treading over the snow.

"Thank you, Eguchi-san," he said in a hoarse voice, bowing his head. "I won't ever forget this either."

(to be continued)


	6. Epilogue Two: Tread Lightly

**Note: **And this, dear friends, is the end! Thanks to all who reviewed, especially Finch, Wistful Eyes and Supernaturalove. You have been very inspirational from beginning to end. And thanks to Margit Ritzka for..well, or being very inspirational, also, asides from supportive and patient with the tedious process of beta-reading. ;)

As for the title of this last epilogue, I declare myself a new –ocassionary- member of the club of annoying authors who make obscure references to literary works just to see if people will spot them. Don´t hold it against me!

Wistful Eyes: "-dono" has no gender. If you watch the series in Japanese, you will get to hear Okina-dono, Shishio-dono and even Hiko-dono, among others. As far as I´ve been able to get , no Japanese polite/ honorific/ affective suffix seems to be specifical of one gender, with the possible exception of "-kun". The reason why people laugh at "Himura-dono" in the village is that it´s rather..archaic, apart from very polite. In the series, it´s used by people whoa re either very old (like Okina) or who have any motive to talk old-fashioned (Like Kenshin or the monk Anji). 

**Warning: **This chapter has made me change the rating…sorry. Now it´s PG-13. 

**Quiet Life I: Winter Storm**

**Epilogue II: Tread Lightly**

Kenshin put a hand over his forehead, sheltering his eyes to give a last glance to the disappearing red sun. Below his weary feet, the few scattered homes that formed the whole village in the valley were receiving its last caresses, and the hurrying tiny dots turned under his keen scrutiny into villagers who returned home after an unusually warm day. He could even hear their voices, some grave and some amused, some matter-of-fact and some yelling the last pleasantries before getting inside; all, of course, unaware that he was there, watching them with an intent, almost hungry stare.

As he turned back to put the weight of the various bags he had to carry once more on his shoulders, the red-haired man couldn't help but smile at that odd feeling he was experiencing. The air he breathed, the sounds he heard, as well as the sight his eyes were filled with to the brim were _home_. He could perceive it in the strange thrill in his heart upon that first view, and also in the way in which his limbs forgot the strain after the long journey to hurry down like mad things, burning in desire to return to a place that was much more to him now than a simple residence. It was there where his heart had belonged since long ago, maybe since the first time he had seen that girl watching him with curious eyes, but it had taken straining and dangerous situations for him to realise it. Knowledge came with sorrow, and awareness with pain, so had his truth been since very early on in life … and not for nothing.

Repressing a wince at the memories that the last thought was bringing to his mind, Kenshin shook his head and continued walking. Night would have almost fallen when he arrived. Maybe, he hoped, he would be able to see Miyoko still awake and have dinner with his family...

When he was close enough to the first lights, though, a weak luminescence still persisted, and he was able to slow down his stride, soothing his senses in the humid and peaceful feeling of the place. He had the secret hope sometimes that, in the future, he would be able to learn things just by living like that, and acquire a new kind of wisdom that didn't have anything to do with the awareness of how horrible things could have been. That hope, he knew, was vain and empty, for the very fact that it would always be entwined with the fear of forgetting. Eternal inner torture was ten thousand times better than false inner peace, and this he had firmly believed during a good part of his life as well. Most remarkably when he had had terrible glimpses on how calm could the conscience of an assassin come to be…

"Himura-san! You´re back!"

Snapped out of his musings abruptly, Kenshin lifted his head and looked into the direction of the voice. At one side of the road, kneeling among the bushes, there was the silhouette of a girl who looked as if she was searching for something… and, as she got up and walked towards him, his heart almost stopped beating at the sight.

"You're back! Oh, your wife is going to be so happy…"

_It's Mayo, _he told himself in a quieting whisper, forcing his eyes to look at the features of the village girl. Still, her very presence brought him such remembrances that for a while he was unable to say a word.

"I've heard lots of things… Did you have a good trip?" she asked, with a big smile in her face. 

"Uh... yes," he answered, somewhat lamely. As she came to stand before him, dusting her clothes with a vengeance, he had to force himself to swallow the knot in his throat. "What a coincidence… you're my welcoming party once more."

Even though it was almost dark, Kenshin could have sworn that the girl had ceased to smile for a second. Belatedly, it struck him that she hadn't ever talked about that anecdote, and this made him think a bit for the first time.

"You could say so… As it hadn't snowed in such a long time, I was searching for the herb for my grandmother's concoction," she explained, her hands behind her back. "But uh, it's getting dark and now there aren't many chances anymore…."

"I see…" Discarding the whole heap of strange and vague associations that had come to his mind uninvitedly, Kenshin had to smile at the nine-year-old's gravity. Without a second thought, he laid his heavy bags on the ground, and flashed her an encouraging look. "Maybe I can help you."

"Really?" The girl couldn't suppress her relief in a first moment, though it soon died and turned into shyness. "Er… but Himura-san, you don't have to bother. It's… it´'s of no importance, and you, well, you have just arrived and…."

"Don't worry," he cut her short, already heading for the place where he remembered he had found the digestive herb in the past. He did not have to search for long, for soon enough the smell of the plant guided him towards the right place. As he crawled inside the bushes, his exhausted limbs gave some protests, but he ignored them.

"You see, there has been little time for them to grow. There are few, that's why you didn't find them. I'm going to cut half of them; the other half is necessary if you want them to multiply."

The girl knelt at his side, and watched his procedures with a solemn silence.

"Thank you," she said in the end, bowing once he laid his prize in her hand. "I'm so stupid…"

"Don't say that," he scolded her, struggling to his feet and helping her to do the same. "They are difficult to find, and less so in the night."

"I've been searching for long now, Himura-san," she sighed with a rueful smile. Kenshin acknowledged that point with an absent nod, and went back to take his things. Now it was really dark, and he could feel the cautious uncertainty in Mayo's stride behind him.

"I met a girl who reminded me of you the first time I saw you," he observed minutes later, as their faces were starting to reflect the first glow of the lights from Mayo's house. He didn't know very well why he was returning on this, and in the girl's presence, but somehow he couldn't help it.

"You did?" The answer sounded calm, almost uninterested. "And who was she?"

"I… I don't know," he replied, losing his gaze in fascination on the far-away translucent shoji. _Maybe it was even the truth, _he thought. "She was in the Ebei village, but I didn't see her again."

"Ah." 

For a while, there was silence.  Lost in their own thoughts, both continued to walk through the night, until at last they stopped in front of the door. There, the man turned back and made a gesture with his hand.

"Well…you're home now."

"I… I saw a girl, too, that day. Running… she wasn't from this village."

"What?" Astonished, Kenshin advanced towards Mayo, who stepped back instinctively. "Did you say something?"

"N… no." The girl shook her head with vehemence, and walked a few paces away. "I'm sorry... It was nothing. Really."

Kenshin could perceive her growing uneasiness, and felt as if violently pushed away. Sighing in resignation, he willed himself to be calm, and drew back to the closest to a casual expression that he could muster in a matter of seconds.

"All right, all right," he said in a conciliating tone." You don't have to take me that seriously! Now, you'd better get inside, or your parents will start to be worried about you."

"Okay." Swallowing in a long gulp, Mayo bowed deeply. "Thank you, Himura-san. Thank you very much. And… welcome."

As he watched the girl's form walk towards the light in the door, Kenshin stroked his hair pensively. It wasn't until minutes later that he realised, ashamed, that he was staring into nowhere… and then, repressing a shiver, he turned back and set off once more for the remainder of his journey.

_Rest in peace, Kumi-chan, _he muttered to himself, in a soft tone._ I promise I'll learn to look after myself alone from now on._

*     *     *     *     *

When Kenshin at last laid his hand on the shoji of his house, he felt his heart beating faster than normal. Maybe it was because of the prolonged absence, or maybe because this time, more than once, he had feared he would never return…

But no, what was he thinking? He would _always_ have returned, no matter what. Always returned to the place where his heart lay, his home.

_Always return to the place that **she **had chosen._

Giving a sharp intake of breath, Kenshin dwelt for instants in the warm feeling of happiness that crept across his body. Even if he did not deserve it, he had a home. He had people who waited for him, trusting him to be always what he had become for them and only for them. And this… oh, this made things so much easier.

_So much worth the pain…_

The ex-swordsman's hand grabbed the old wooden shoji, and pulled it open in sudden impatience with a single, clean movement. As the things he had carried were discarded on the floor, his eyes set out to scan the place hungrily, until they met what he was searching with such anxiousness.

She was sitting at the fireside in her usual elegant position, sewing as she hummed a tune that was brusquely stopped as soon as she felt a noise behind her. Miyoko had laid her head in her lap, snoring softly and oblivious of him and of everything. When her mother's body tensed up, she gave a tiny whimper of complaint, and rolled forcefully to her other side. 

"Ssssh." he hushed his wife, who looked unsure between her urge and her duty to get up and greet him and the girl in her lap. For a moment, he had to stop and stare into her soft brown eyes, so full of quiet joy and the longing to embrace him as he would embrace her, until the very remembrance of his absence was totally erased. Sometimes, those eyes hurt him and made him remember the fate of that other man she had once waited for, but not today. 

Today, he simply needed them.

Slowly, Kenshin knelt on the floor in front of his wife, and with utmost care he took the little body of his child onto his arms. Miyoko didn't complain now, but her hands grabbed his kimono securely. Tomoe nodded, and got up to unroll and prepare her daughter's bed without saying anything.

_Have you missed me too, little one?, _he thought while he waited, and as he stroked the girl's back with soft movements. He wanted to embrace her, too, but he had learned that small children were fragile beings who were subject to a wholly different set of rules. If she woke up now and excitement for unexpected arrivals got to her, she wouldn't fall asleep for long, and the next day… 

"Here," Tomoe told him in a hushed voice. Kenshin got next to her, and laid Miyoko on her futon. Side to side with his wife and her clothes almost brushing his, it was difficult now not to perceive how she was trembling, and the emotions she was trying to smother behind a calm and composed exterior. He couldn't help a thrill that shook his own limbs as her beautiful face, which the light of the hearth was bathing in a golden hue, turned away from her sleeping daughter and towards him. A brief flash of that same face covered in blood, and with those brown eyes staring at him piercingly, cruelly, forlornly, passed through his mind, entwined with memories about that night when he had met her. 

_They had both changed…in **so** many ways._

"Welcome home," she said, almost managing to quench the tremor in her voice. For Kenshin, though, that slight hesitation was all he needed, and the walls of his restraint broke down as if they had been made of paper.

"Tomoe…" he whispered, embracing her with passion and running his hands over her back. Her body offered no resistance; it felt soft and pliant in his arms. Maybe she had felt it too; she had felt for a while that she might have lost everything she had.

"Eguchi-san sent a messenger, and Matsuo-san told me... that you had done it," she managed to utter between kisses. "I was so glad..."

"I needed to finish my trip," he explained. "By the way… I have brought things to put into the rice."

"Really?" With evident reluctance, Tomoe sobered and tried to pull away from him. Her efforts, however, were of no avail at all. 

"Tomorrow," he said. "Leave the rice for tomorrow."

"But you need to have supper," she protested, unable to hide the half-heartedness of her complaint. As Kenshin thought then, they couldn't ever have agreed more: the slow and laborious cooking of supper and subsequent eating and washing dishes was very far from his mind now.

"I had food on my way," he lied, embracing her again and hoping that Tomoe wouldn't think she was a bad wife for letting that pass. To his relief, if she did, she was apparently resigned with the thought.

"But you must at least change clothes," she added, while she ran her hands through his red hair one more time. "Wait here, I'll bring you a yukata…"

Sighing in resignation, Kenshin accepted to let her go, though not before he had forced himself to bring all of Hiko's exercises on focus and concentration back to his mind. His master would laugh at him to no end if he just could see him _now, _he mused ruefully as he couldn't resist the need to follow her every movement with an intent glance.

"Here it… is," she hesitated, when she lifted her head from the clothes box and saw him standing at her side. Kenshin looked at her with an almost ashamed expression, and she couldn't help but laugh.

"I'll unroll the futon while you get changed," she announced with a smile still dancing on her lips.

_Oh, yes, laugh at me indeed_, he thought, going behind the screen and quickly putting his travel clothes off. They were smelly and dirty, and he couldn't help feeling good for getting into a clean yukata once more. By the way, it was remarkable that Tomoe hadn't asked him to get washed before getting in the same futon than her…good indicator of the need _she _felt. 

_We're both pitifully evident_ , he concluded, now smiling as well. Folding everything neatly, -a good way to recollect his wits-, he stepped out from behind  the screen, and almost at once his glance fell on the figure of his wife sitting on the now unrolled futon. 

"Tomoe…" he breathed in awe. She had freed the scintillating dark masses of her hair over her pale back, and, though her pose was ladylike and restrained, he could have sworn that there was some red in her cheeks, and that she was smiling like a little girl while thinking he couldn't see her. Belatedly, he remembered the first night they had spent together in the same place, and how the hieratic white statue of the beautiful, mature woman who waited for him in sad apathy had made him feel so small and insignificant in his own house.

If there was something that nobody could have ever doubted, it was that she was a very beautiful woman. Everybody stared at her in the street, and made hushed comments whenever she passed by. But for him now, as he thought while he walked towards her, that beauty was nothing; it could not be compared with the love and the need shining in her eyes.

_Need for **him.**_

Oh, _what_ had he done to deserve it?

"Let's try not to wake her," she said, rolling to the side so that he could take place on the couch. Kenshin nodded, and caressed the hand she was laying on the futon next to him.

"I knew you would come today," she continued. As he threw her a puzzled glance, she smiled, and leaned her head against his shoulder. "Yes, I did. Miyoko had asked me about you tonight before falling asleep. She said that you… that it was time for you to return."

"So my daughter is a seer?" Kenshin joked, unable to hide his pleasure at the girl's sally. Tomoe shrugged her shoulders.

"Maybe," she mused aloud, pensively. Her husband planted a kiss on her cheek, and both sank slowly onto the couch.

"Do you think that when she gets up and sees me there she will say "See? I told you so!"?"

"Who knows?" she smiled. Then, however, as Kenshin was about to give her another kiss, she drew back a bit, and her glance took a more serious tinge. "But I was worried this time. People… they talked a lot about what happened and what could happen during those last weeks. I heard you had taken an active part on the negotiations, and I'm sorry… I knew you would try to fulfil your promise, but I was worried. "

The red-haired man sobered somewhat at those words. Lying back on his side, he touched at her back reassuringly, searching for her eyes.

"You don't have to be sorry, Tomoe," he sighed." You were right, things could have gone wrong very easily, more easily than what I let you know when I left. I didn't want you to feel anxious…"

The woman's brow furrowed.

"Just because you don't tell me doesn't mean that I do not know what may be going on."

 "I know, I know," Kenshin said conciliatingly. Tomoe crawled a bit towards him again, and he used the occasion to pull her close. "But I did what I thought was best in every moment, for you, for me and for them. If I had to do it once more, and I had even less certainty about the outcome, I would still not hesitate. It's the truth, Tomoe… one of those few truths I've been able to achieve."

"I'm perfectly aware of this." 

Sure that she was annoyed again with him, the red-haired man gave a long breath, and lifted his head to look at her face. As he did so, though, what he met was a pair of brown eyes swollen with pride. The warmth he felt inside then was far greater than everything he had felt before, and, unable to repress himself any longer, he pushed her against her pillow to kiss her deeply.

 "You are just… like that", she moaned, encircling his back with her arms. Kenshin did the same with hers, and each could listen to the other's ragged breath in their ears for a while.

"And you want me to be like that?" he asked, his tone light-hearted but with a certain seriousness unmistakeably hidden behind it. Tomoe became serious too, and the solemnity, the intensity in her features surprised even him for a moment.

"No matter what the cost," she answered, as he stared into her eyes and their glances met. Her husband stopped in mid- embrace, and stayed there for a while, waiting for a continuation to her vehement words.

 "My dear…"

But such continuation never came.

Somewhat more pensive than what he had been before, the red-haired man regained his smile slowly, and bent on his knees over the silently inviting woman. 

(the end)


End file.
